Jeremiah 22-25 • The Lord is our Righteousness

chapter 22 is an interesting chapter because it records some messages given to some of the last kings of judah these are the last kings of judah by the way after this point after the babylonians conquer jerusalem there will be no more kings until the coming of the king of kings and that's kind of an interesting sort of a dynamic is it not so we're right at that place let me show you on the screen kind of a list of the the this is the historical order of the last four kings of judah and i'm i put these here because the different names are used for us in the text and i don't want you to get confused we start with jehovah has who is also referred to as shalom okay and he is referred to shalom in jeremiah so that's important to remember and then we have jehoiakim and then jehoiah kin it sounds a lot similar does it not and then finally zedekiah who is the last the last king of judah and the reason we're making this point is because in this chapter jeremiah is given a message to give to the king of judah and then the the lord begins to speak about prophetically about the fate of a few of those kings so it begins this way thus says the lord go down to the house of the king of judah and speak there this word can i stop just for a moment to say that this i don't know how jeremiah felt about hearing this directive from the lord to go to literally the house of the king of judah in other words the palace and to give this message but this was a dangerous thing this was a dangerous thing to do this would be something akin to you to you and being called by the lord to go to the white house and begin to speak the you know the words of the lord and and the the chance of somebody just kind of having a bad day and deciding to arrest you or do worse is very high so you know when jeremiah hears these words you have to kind of wonder what's going through his heart perhaps but in verse 2 he's told to say hear the word of the lord o king of judah who sits on the throne of david you and your servants and your people who enter these gates now we don't know exactly which king of those last few was on the throne at the time but the message was clear thus says the lord verse 3 do justice and righteousness and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed and do no wrong or violence to the resident alien the fatherless and the widow nor shed innocent blood in this place for if you will indeed obey this word then there shall enter the gates of this house kings who sit on the throne of david riding in chariots and on horses they and their servants and their people but if you will not obey these words i swear by myself declares the lord that this house shall become a desolation for thus says the lord concerning the house of the king of judah you are like gilead to me like the summit of lebanon which are beautiful things yet surely i will make you a desert an uninhabited city i will prepare destroyers against you each with his weapons and they shall cut down your choicest cedars and cast them into the fire and many nations will pass by the city and every man will say to his neighbor why is the lord dealt thus with this great city and they will answer because they have forsaken the covenant of the lord their god and worshiped other gods and served them make no mistake about it the judgment of the lord was coming because of idolatry the sin of idolatry now verse 10 begins a specific recording uh and a message to king jehoia has who again is referred to as shalom in these verses all right notice what the lord says weep not for him who is dead nor grief for him but we bitterly for him who goes away for he shall return no more to see his native land for thus says the lord concerning shalom the son of josiah king of judah who reigned instead of josiah his father and who went away from this place he shall return here no more but in the place where they have carried him captive there shall he die and he shall never see this land again now can i just remind you of something important here in jeremiah these prophecies are not given in chronological order we've already seen the babylonians come and set up their siege against jerusalem but now we've gone back in time see that siege took place during the reign of zedekiah but we are now we've gone back and and babylon at this particular point hasn't advanced itself against jerusalem and the the the nation that is kind of flexing its muscle right now is egypt and egypt is going to cause some trouble for judah but then babylon is ultimately going to come and cause trouble for egypt they're going to take over egypt but right now egypt is kind of this the nation that is giving them the most trouble although lord has been telling them that the babylonians are coming eventually now we read about this actually in second kings and i want to put this on the screen for you so we can see it together and actually read it together because this is the what what we are going to read about what was just prophesied jehoiah has was 23 years old when he began to reign and he reigned three months in jerusalem his mother's name was hamital the daughter of jeremiah of libna different jeremiah and he did what was evil in the sight of the lord according to all that his fathers had done and pharaoh nico put him in bonds at ribla in the land of hamath that he might not reign in jerusalem and laid on the land a tribute or if you will a taxation of a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold and pharaoh nico made eleakim the son of josiah king in the place of josiah his father and changed his name to jehoiachim but he took jehovah's away and he came to egypt and died there and that's exactly what god prophesied through jeremiah he said he will he said if you're gonna if you're gonna mourn mourn for the one who is taken away for he will be taken away and he will not return but remember pharaoh nico is the one who is hassling judah right now and it was pharaoh nico who actually killed king josiah who was a godly king in fact the last of the godly kings and he was killed in battle and the the his sons took the throne after him and did an absolutely horrible job um of of ruling so there we have the issue related to jehovah has the next message that comes to us in verse 13 and following uh is to jehoiachim who was placed on the throne by pharaoh nico and that was something that the pharaohs would do or not the pharaohs but really any conquering country i mean the pharaohs did it but but other any sometimes other conquering babylon even does did it they would conquer a people and then they would depose the reigning king and they would put maybe his brother or nephew or relative on the throne but they would threaten him within an inch of his life and they would basically put him there to be a puppet king and to do what the conquering king asked of them to do which was of course pay tribute and obey just be obedient and so jehoiakim was put on the throne by pharaoh nico all right all right verse 13 woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness and his upper rooms by injustice who makes his neighbor serve him for nothing and does not give him his wages who says i will build myself a great house with spacious upper rooms who cuts windows for it paneling it with cedar and painting it with vermilion do you think you are a king because you compete in cedar did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness then it was well with him he judged the cause of the poor and needy then it was well is not this to know me declares the lord but you have eyes and heart only for dishonest gain for shedding innocent blood and for practicing oppression and violence therefore thus says the lord concerning jehoiachim the son of josiah king of judah they shall not lament for him saying ah my brother or ah sister they shall not lament for him saying ah lord or ah his majesty with the burial of a donkey he shall be buried dragged and dumped beyond the gates of jerusalem and we read about the demise of jehoiakim in second chronicles chapter 35 on the screen so you can see it here with me it says jehoiakim was 25 years old when he began to reign and he reigned 11 years in jerusalem he did what was evil in the sight of the lord his god against him came up nebuchadnezzar king of babylon and bound him in chains to take him to babylon nebuchadnezzar also carried part of the vessels of the house of the lord to babylon and put them in his palace in babylon so this is really the first conquering of jerusalem by the babylonian empire but they didn't destroy the city at this point they just came in and flexed their muscle and and basically took jehoiachim and and you know left and and said this is now our city belongs to us and so there but the jews are still gonna rebel even though god has been telling them the babylonian invasion was my idea it was my discipline upon you for your lack of obedience and your rebellion against me so if you will just submit to what they do it's going to go well for you but if you resist you're going to die and they would not listen this was the message that god you're going to hear this coming through jeremiah as we go on so in verses 20 through 23. now the next four verses it's kind of a general prophecy against jerusalem and her rulers but you're going to notice in these verses the lord refers to them as shepherds and that was kind of a word that they would use to describe rulers at that time and it didn't necessarily have a spiritual connotation it just meant they were shepherds of the lord's flock in more of a political sort of a sense so it says in verse 20 go up to lebanon and cry out and lift your voice in bastion cry out for abarim for all your lovers are destroyed speaking of the gods they worshipped i spoke to you in your prosperity but you said i will not listen this has been your way from your youth that you have not obeyed my voice the wind shall shepherd all your shepherds and your lovers shall go into captivity then you will be ashamed and confounded because of all your evil o inhabitant of lebanon nested among the cedars how you will be pitied when pangs come upon you pain as of a woman in labor now as we begin verse 24 we're going to see a prophetic message that was given to um jehoiakin but you're going to see that he is mentioned or called kanaya and you got to kind of hang with all these names it's a little bit like lord of the rings i got to be honest with you there's a lot of names and and and sometimes there's several names for for one person but uh konaya was also known as jaconiah who was also known as jojoyakin so um there you go and pay attention because there will be a test okay here we go verse 24 as i live declares the lord though kaniah the son of jehoiachim king of judah was this where the signet ring on my right hand yet i would tear you off and give you into the hand of those who seek your life into the hand of those of whom you are afraid even into the hand of nebuchadnezzar king of babylon and into the hand of the chaldeans what is the lord saying here about jeconiah or if you will jehoiakim he says even if you were my signet ring and a signet ring was a special ring that a king would give to his top advisors his top officials and a k the ring was would have a the crest the the symbol of the king and and when the king would create an edict or a rule or a law in the land they would put a blob of kind of a hardening clay on there but while it was still soft they would press the signet ring into the clay and that would of course make the image of the crest of the king and everybody would know that was an official document okay so people who received a signet ring were p were trusted officials of the king and the lord is saying even if you were a trusted official and you wore the signet ring in other words saying that you had my authority and that was something that a man with a signet ring of the king could do he could create his own edicts in the name of the king and sometimes they did and just say the king says so there you go you know that's it so even if you were one of my trusted officials god says i would tear you off you can kind of see how the lord feels about jehoiakim can't you referring once again to him as conair verse 26 he says i will hurl you and your mother who bore you into another country where you are not born and there you shall die but to the land of which they will long to return there they shall not return and i want you to notice here beginning in verse 28 now the lord utters a curse on the line of jehoiachin or cania verse 28 says is this man kaniah a despised broken pot a vessel no one cares for why are he and his children hurled and cast into a land that they do not know o land land land hear the word of the lord thus says the lord write this man down as childless a man who shall not succeed in his days for none of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of david and ruling again in judah in other words what god did is he cut off the line of konaya or jehoiakin and said no more shall any of this man's descendants rule and reign on the throne you might find it interesting to know that when we get into the genealogies of jesus there are some interesting dynamics related to this man konaya and and we don't have time to get into it tonight but suffice it to say that the human lineage of our lord jesus did not come through this man who was cursed because of course jesus will rule and reign on david's throne chapter 23 continues a message to the corrupt leaders of god's people once again referred to as shepherds but we're going to find in this chapter there's also a fascinating section where the lord speaks prophetically of the coming messiah and we'll see how that goes but it begins this way woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture declares the lord therefore thus says the lord the god of israel concerning the shepherds who care for my people you have scattered my flock and have driven them away and you have not attended to them behold i will attend to you for your evil deeds declares the lord then i will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where i have driven them and i will bring them back to their fold and they shall be fruitful and multiply i will set shepherds over them who will care for them and they shall fear no more nor be dismayed neither shall any be missing declares the lord so what is god saying here very simply he is condemning the leaders or shepherds of the southern kingdom of judah for not taking care of the people he then promises a day when he will bring his people back to their homeland and set people up as genuine shepherds over his people but of course all of this is a prefiguration of the final shepherd the good shepherd the one who will come that is of course jesus our lord and savior and that's when the lord begins to speak through jeremiah of the coming of messiah and it is recorded for us here beginning in verse five and there's a very interesting and important statement made in these verses that i want you to take note of but let's read it it says behold the days are coming declares the lord when i will raise up for david a righteous branch and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land now by the way this has not been fulfilled as we know jesus did not sit on the throne of david in his first coming he's going to do that in his second coming right but remember after zedekiah there were no more kings over israel none they were done they were gone so jesus is the next king that is going to rule and reign on the throne of david in the lineage of david and and this is going to happen but it says that in verse 6 and this is very important i want you to take note of this in his days judah will be saved and israel will dwell securely and by the way that word saved that has given us there in verse 6 is the same word that is also translated delivered all right so judah will be delivered and israel will dwell securely and check out this last statement and this is the name by which he will be called the lord is our righteousness isn't that cool the lord that's he says and again prophetically the lord is our righteousness is what he will be called and the reason that's such an amazing statement is because that's what jesus came to do he came to be our righteousness we are not righteous before god isn't it funny that people think of christians or they non-believers refer to christians as those self-righteous people if they only knew what christianity was all about they would realize that the reason that we've came to christ is that we recognize we're not righteous nor could we ever be righteous it's not possible we cannot be righteous in and of ourselves okay what we have to do or what we do when we come to christ is we receive his righteousness that's not self-righteousness that's jesus righteousness he has imputed to us his righteousness right and and so christians are not self-righteous if they are they're not christians bottom line if you meet a self-righteous christian then you have not met a christian a true born-again believer understands i have zero righteousness in me none zip zilch the only righteousness that i have today is what has been given to me by him it's not and it it's it's really you know imputed that's the word we like to use here's how paul described it in his letter to the romans in chapter 3 i love this he says but now the righteousness of god notice it's not of man it's of god has been manifested apart from the law that means apart from keeping rules obeying commandments keeping feasts food laws and things like that apart from the law although the law and the prophets bear witness to it he says the righteousness of god is what comes to us through faith in jesus christ for all who believe so are you righteous before god yes you are how are you righteous before god by faith by faith in the finished work of jesus on the cross we stand righteous before god and isn't that incredible that here about 550 575 years or whatever before christ was was was born jeremiah prophesies that this branch that the lord will raise up to rule and reign on the throne of david will be called the lord is our righteousness that is so beautiful verse 7 as we go on here in jeremiah therefore behold the days are coming declares the lord when they shall no longer say and this is actually repeated elsewhere in the book we've seen it already as the lord lives who brought up the people of israel out of the land of egypt no he says that's not what they're going to say but they're going to say as the lord lives who brought up and led the offspring of the house of israel out of the north country referring to babylon or the persian kingdom and out of all the countries where he had driven them then they shall dwell in their own land verses 9 and 10 this is kind of a poignant section of jeremiah where jeremiah expresses his own personal grief over the false prophets and how they had just so deceived the people and taken them for a spiritual ride he says concerning the prophets my heart is broken within me all my bones shake i'm like a drunken man like a man overcome by wine because of the lord and because of his holy words for the land is full of adulterers because of the curse the land mourns and the pastures of the wilderness are dried up their course is evil and their might is not right so all that concerning the prophets the false prophets so now the lord speaks to jeremiah's grief and he says both prophet and priests are ungodly even in my house i have found their evil declares the lord therefore their way shall be to them like slippery paths in the darkness into which they shall be driven and fall for i will bring disaster upon them in the year of their punishment declares the lord in the prophets of samaria i saw an unsavory thing remember that was the northern kingdom of israel that has been long gone at this time they prophesied by baal and led my people israel astray but the in the prophets of jerusalem i have seen a horrible thing they commit adultery and walk in lies they strengthen the hands of evil doers so that no one turns from his evil all of them have become like sodom to me and its inhabitants like gomorrah therefore thus says the lord of hosts concerning the prophets behold i will feed them with bitter food and give them poisoned water to drink for from the prophets of jerusalem ungodliness has gone out into all the land thus says the lord of hosts do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you filling you with vain hopes they speak visions of their own minds not from the mouth of the lord they say continually to those who despise the word of the lord it shall be well with you and to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart they say no disaster shall come upon you for who among them has stood in the counsel of the lord to see and to hear his word or who has paid attention to his word and listened behold the storm of the lord wrath has gone forth a whirling tempest it will burst upon the head of the wicked the anger of the lord will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his heart in the latter days you will understand it clearly i did not send the prophets yet they ran i did not speak to them yet they prophesied what does it mean yet they ran messengers in those days would be given a message to run and go tell the king or to tell the people of something you remember you can read about that sometimes in the days of david when there was a battle and perhaps david was even back still back at the city awaiting news on how the battle went they would run with a messenger they'd be given a message by the commander of the army and told to run to the city to give the message and and so he's saying to them i did not send them to run with a message and yet they ran anyway they ran to give their message even though i didn't send them and and they spoke even though i didn't speak to them he says in verse 22 but if they had stood in my counsel in other words if they'd taken time to wait in my presence then they would have proclaimed my words to my people and they would have turned from their evil way and from the evil of their deeds and so you know you can just see how this just is so grievous to the lord that these false prophets just spoke so freely to uh the uh the people of judah and gave them false hopes and told them jeremiah is saying lies the lord is not gonna let this city fall it's it's the presence of the lord is here it will never fall verse 23 and 24 are really just a couple of quick verses that speak about how foolish and futile it is to oppose or reject god which of course the the false prophets were doing he says am i a god at hand declares the lord and not a guard god far away can a man hide himself in secret places so that i cannot see him declares the lord do i not fill heaven and earth declares the lord no matter where they go no matter what they say i'm going to be there i'm going to hear what they say and so he goes on speaking of the false prophet saying i have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name saying i have dreamed i have dreamed how long shall there be lies in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies and who prophesied the deceit of their own heart who think to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another even as their fathers forget my name for baal you know i actually get asked quite often these days about dreams and people will will they want to know how they are to think about dreams because some of them are having dreams that they're wondering about and some of them are hearing others talk about their dreams and they're wondering if there's any truth to what these people are saying and so they will often ask and and largely this is people from other countries believe it or not but but they will ask you know is there any truth to this sort of a thing and we have to be careful you know because there's a lot of weird people that are doing a lot of weird things and they're having dreams and whether they're having real dreams or or or they're making them up it's sometimes very difficult to tell and particularly for new believers or people that don't know the word very well they they're challenged to say well is was that genuine was that the real deal or is this something i should pay attention to because you know we are told in the scripture that in the latter days in the last days that god will pour it as spirit and that there will be dreams given in the latter days so we can't reject dreams out of hand but by the same token we're foolish if we embrace everybody's dream and everybody's interpretation of their dream because those things can be wild and wacky and so it's just like anything else that we hear when somebody comes along and says this is what i think well we're supposed to compare that to the word of god it's the same thing with dreams when you hear of a dream or you hear somebody had a dream we should not just embrace it as soon as we hear it we should say oh that's interesting i'm going to compare that with god's word and see if that measures up because if there's anything in your dream that violates god's word i'm not going to accept it i'm just going to assume that that really wasn't a dream from the lord that was probably just a result of that pepperoni pizza you had last night or something like that or or some indigestion during the nighttime hours i don't think that's from the lord because god is not going to violate his own word he's not going to contradict himself and so we have to be very careful if somebody comes along with a new revelation that just that you can't possibly compare to god's word because it's like it's all i'd be very very cautious very careful because we're told in the word to test everything and if we can't test it by the word then we got a problem you know so we need to we need to be careful but we also need to be people who don't just reject things because i have heard uh particularly among arab people that many of them are having dreams about jesus christ and in those dreams they are being told that the only way to the father is through jesus christ the son and that they must come to the cross and confess their sins and repent now that's a dream that goes right with the word there's no problem with that right so you hear about that and you rejoice you praise god say well lord thank you that in these last days you're you're giving dreams that are actually bringing people to a saving knowledge of jesus christ that's wonderful you know but some of these other yahoos that are coming up with dreams you just got to be really careful so yeah verse 28 says let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream but let him who has my word speak my word faithfully what has straw in common with wheat declares the lord and i love verse 29 this is worth taking your time to meditate is not my word like fire declares the lord and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces wow you know i i read that today while i was studying and sue came in the room just right after i read this and i was kind of staring off into the nothingness i think while i was thinking about this and she kind of looked at me as like you know you okay yeah i'm just thinking about this verse because it's just you know there's a lot to it it's not my word like fire it is not my word he says like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces wow therefore behold i am against the prophets declares the lord who steal my words from one another behold i am against the prophets declares the lord who use their tongues and declare declares the lord behold i am against those who prophesy lying dreams declares the lord and you tell them and lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness when i did not send them or charge them so they do not profit these people at all declares the lord so god is speaking directly against these deceivers now beginning in verse 33 we're faced with a little bit of a challenge and i want to tell you this before we kind of read this section because what what god is doing here in this section is he's using a little hebrew word play and that's difficult for us because we don't speak hebrew i assume and it can be a little bit challenging but it all centers around one hebrew word that could be translated two ways it's the hebrew word that is translated either burden or oracle and you'll you'll notice in some old testament prophetic books it will say the burden of the lord was given to so and so and he spoke saying or you might look at that very same passage in another bible and it says the oracle of the lord that was given to so and so and he spoke saying because it's the same hebrew word but burden although it was a word that was sometimes given or used to describe a message it had a dual meaning because it could also mean like a burden you put on your back something that's heavy something that is going to weigh you down or fatigue you is probably a good way of putting it here's what's challenging about this passage at times the word burden is meant and at times the word oracle is meant and there are other times when both meanings are meant and and and to make matters worse here in the esv that i'm reading from they simply use the word burden throughout the entire passage they don't switch to oracle even though that is you'll see that that is kind of what is meant and in fact the very first verse verse 33 you can see the difference and maybe i'll be able to illustrate this it says when one of this people or a prophet or a priest asks you what is the burden of the lord and what that means is what is the message give me a message from god that's what they're asking okay but they refer to it as a burden you shall say to them you are the burden now you see how the word has switched to something heavy that causes fatigue so they're saying give me the message of the lord and they're saying but they refer to it as a burden what is the latest burden of the lord you're the burden you're the latest burden to the lord and he says and i will cast you off declares the lord wow and god does not want them to use this term anymore and you're going to see that as we go on verse 34 as for the prophet priest or one of the people who says the burden of the lord he says i will punish that man in his household thus shall you say everyone to his neighbor and everyone to his brother what has the lord answered or what has the lord spoken that's what you ought to say but the burden of the lord no you shall mention no more for the burden is every man's own word and you pervert the words of the living god the lord of hosts our god thus you shall say to the prophet what has the lord answered you or what has the lord spoken but if you say the burden of the lord thus says the lord because you have said these words the burden of the lord when i sent you sent to you saying you shall not say that the burden of the lord therefore behold i will surely lift you up and cast you away from my presence you and the city that i gave to you and your fathers and i will bring upon you everlasting reproach and perpetual shame which shall not be forgotten wow god says do not use that anymore because you know what you are my burden you are fatiguing to me because you have lied and you've given a false message chapter 24 is a very short chapter it has a very simple message about those who had already been taken captive to babylon and we know that early on some of the people were taken captive to babylon as we've already read by the way do you know that in those early capturings of people among them was daniel and shadrach meshach and abednego they went very early on as very very young men into the babylonian kingdom and daniel stayed there long enough for the entire 70 years of exile and in fact it was daniel who got to sifting through jeremiah's prophetic writings and found what we're going to read here in just a bit that god had prophesied 70 years of exile and he knew they were very close to the end of that but this chapter says after nebuchadnezzar king of babylon had taken into exile from jerusalem jeconiah the son of jehoiakim king of judah together with the officials of judah the craftsmen and the metal workers and it brought them to babylon the lord showed me this vision behold two baskets of figs placed before the temple of the lord one basket had very good figs like first ripe figs but the other basket had very bad figs so bad that they could not be eaten and the lord said to me what do you see jeremiah i said figs the good fig's very good and the bad figs very bad so bad that they cannot be eaten then the word of the lord came to me thus says the lord the god of israel like these good figs so i will regard as good the exiles from judah whom i have sent away from this place to the land of the chaldeans i will set my eyes on them for good and i will bring them back to this land i will build them up and not tear them down i will plant them and not pluck them up i will give them a heart to know that i am the lord and they shall be my people and i will be their god for they shall return to me with their whole heart but thus says the lord like the bad figs that are so bad they cannot be eaten so will i treat zedekiah the king of judah who was by the way i remember the final king of judah his officials the remnants of jerusalem who remain in this land and those who dwell in the land of egypt i will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth to be a reproach a byword a taunt and a curse in all the places where i shall drive them and i will send sword famine and pestilence upon them until they shall be utterly destroyed from the land that i gave to them and their fathers why why is god going to bless the people that were taken off to babylon and why is he going to punish those who remain behind it's very simple actually it's because he'd been saying through jeremiah for years that that the babylonian empire and their invasion was his form of discipline and to submit to that form of discipline meant to just give up in fact he told you're going to see this later in jeremiah he's going to tell him just give up those of you who give up and go to the king of babylon and just say i give up i'll spare your lives and here's why they were submitting to the lord's discipline do you hear me they were submitting they were saying you know what we need this this is this this we deserve this and so by surrendering and submitting to the lord's disciplinary hand god said i'll spare you but he said all the jews who stay holed up in the city and and hold out to the last minute and think we're still going to get away we're still going to escape we're going to we're not going to submit to the disciplined hand of the lord he says they will die and they did and they did and that's why the lord said for those who have already gone to babylon i'm going to keep my eye on them i'm actually going to bless them and then i'm going to bring them home last chapter chapter 25 the word that came to jeremiah concerning all the peoples of judah in the fourth year of jehoiakim the son of josiah king of judah that was the first year of nebuchadnezzar king of babylon which jeremiah the prophet spoke to all the people of judah and all the inhabitants of jerusalem here it is for 23 years from the 13th year of josiah the son of ammon king of judah to this day the word of the lord has come to me and i have spoken persistently to you but you have not listened you have neither listened nor inclined your ear to hear although the lord persistently sent to you all his servants the prophets saying turn now every one of you from his evil way and evil deeds and dwell upon the land that the lord has given to you and your fathers from of old and forever do not go after other gods to serve and worship them or provoke me to anger with the work of your hands then i will do you no harm yet you have not listened to me declares the lord that you might provoke me to anger with the work of your hands to your own harm therefore thus says the lord of hosts because you have not obeyed my words behold i will send for all the tribes of the north declares the lord and for nebuchadnezzar the king of babylon my servant and i will bring them against this land and its inhabitants and against all these surrounding nations i and so that's more than just israel right i will devote them to destruction and make them a horror a hissing and an everlasting desolation moreover i will banish from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride the grinding of the millstones and the light of the lamp this whole land shall become a ruin and a waste and these nations shall serve the king of babylon here it is 70 years that's what daniel is going to find later on in the persian kingdom and he's going to realize that that time is almost up then after 70 years are completed i will punish the king of babylon and that nation the land of the chaldeans for their iniquity declares the lord making the land an everlasting waste the reason he adds the and the land of the chaldeans there is because by the time 70 years were up the babylonian empire had already been conquered they were conquered by the medo-persians and so and that happened you'll remember during the reign of daniel he saw that happen too remember that famous handwriting on the wall that was the night that babylon fell and the medo-persians took over and so you know the lord is including that in here in this prophecy verse 13 i will bring upon that land all the words that i have uttered against it everything written in this book which jeremiah prophesied against all the nations for many nations and great kings shall make slaves even of them and i will recompense them according to their deeds and the work of their hands now jeremiah is given an interesting vision of the lord's wrath and it says thus the lord the god of israel said to me and this is a vision here take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath and make all the nations to whom i send you drink it they shall drink and stagger and be crazed because of the sword that i'm sending among them so i took the cup from the lord's hand and made all the nations to whom the lord sent me drink it jerusalem and the cities of judah its kings and officials to make them a desolation and a waste a hissing and a curse as it is as at this day pharaoh king of egypt his servants his officials all his people and all the mixed tribes of them all the kings of the land of us and all the kings of the land of the philistines ashkelon gaza ekron and the remnant of ashdod edom moab and the sons of ammon all the kings of tyre all the kings of sidon all the kings of the coastland across the sea deaden tima buzz and all who cut the corners of their hair that was a pagan practice all the kings of arabia and all the kings of the mixed tribes who dwell in the desert all the kings of zimri all the kings of ilam and all the kings of media all the kings of the north far and near one after another and all the kingdoms of the world that are on the face of the earth and after them the king of babylon shall drink and then you shall say to them thus says the lord of hosts the god of israel drink be drunk and vomit fall and rise no more because of the sword that i'm sending among you and if they refuse to accept the cup from your hand to drink then you shall say to them thus says the lord of hosts you must drink for behold i begin to work disaster at the city that is called by my name and shall you go unpunished you shall not go unpunished for i am summoning a sword against all the inhabitants of the earth declares the lord of hosts you therefore shall prophesy against them all these words and say to them the lord will roar from on high and from his holy habitation utter his voice he will roar mightily against his fold and shout like those who tread grapes against all the inhabitants of the earth the clamor will resound to the ends of the earth for the lord has an indictment against the nations he is entering into judgment with all flesh do you see some shades and prefigurations of the great tribulation here and the wicked he will put to the sword declares the lord thus says the lord of hosts behold disaster is going forth from nation to nation and a great tempest is stirring from the farthest parts of the earth and those pierced by the lord on that day shall extend from one end of the earth to the other they shall not be lamented or gathered or buried they shall be dung on the surface of the ground wail you shepherds and cry out and roll in ashes you lords of the flock for the days of your slaughter and dispersion have come and you shall fall like a choice vessel no refuge will remain for the shepherds no escape for the lords of the flock a voice the cry of the shepherds and the wail of the lords of the flock for the lord is laying waste their pasture and their peaceful folds are devastated because of the fierce anger of the lord like a lion he has left his lair for their land has become a waste because of the sword of the oppressor and because of his fierce anger wow you know we've mentioned many times throughout our study here of jeremiah that there's a lot of judgment going on in jeremiah there's a lot of there's a lot of statements that are very much like this and even though they're poetic they're challenging and they're difficult and there's a lot of people who will read stuff like this and they will say i thought he was a god of love if god is such a god of love why is there so much judgment in the bible how can a god of love judge like this well how can a god of love not judge like this is really the question that ought to be answered we forget it's kind of like saying to a doctor who's going to do surgery on a cancer patient how can a doctor go in and cut out a part of this man's body how can he do that he's supposed to be saving people and caring about people how can he do that well we would never say that because we know that what the doctor is going in to do is to save the patient but sometimes to save the patient you have to go to very radical measures to actually cut something out of the body so that the patient will live and judgment is as much an act of love as it is an act of justice and wrath and that's what we forget you cannot view the nature of god as a god of love apart from his justice and righteousness you can't do that you can't pick him apart you can't categorize the parts of god that you like to think about or talk about or read about and just stay there and never ever deal with the stuff we're dealing with here in jeremiah because this is just as much the the aspect of god's nature as his love but i wan i want you to understand something about god's nature that is very different from you and me if i am going to be angry or express wrath as a human being i have to set aside some certain aspects of my character and nature in order to express that wrath in other words when i get mad i'm probably going to put aside kindness i'm probably going to put aside love i'm going to set those aside for just a minute because i'm going to be mad for a minute and then i'm mad and then that kind of goes away or after i've expressed myself then i usually come back and i regret what i've said why do i regret what i've said well it's because while i was i was so mad that i took my kindness my compassion my understanding my patience and my love and i just set him over here for a minute while i expressed my anger god can't do that god cannot suspend any part of his nature while he is expressing any other part of his nature in other words when god is being loving he is being just as just and righteous as always and when god is pouring out his wrath he is being just as loving just as gracious as he ever has been god does not suspend any part of his character to express any other part of his character which you and i do but that's an important thing to remember especially when we're going through a book like jeremiah that sounds like god was just really having several bad years but that's actually not the case let's pray father we thank you so much for giving us these chapters and this insight and understanding we remember lord that you are a god who is just and righteous and pure and holy in addition to your great love and compassion and mercy and grace and lord even though we are seeing kind of a a focus of that side of wrath and judgment we know lord that you are still the eternal loving gracious god that you've always been and always will be and we're so thankful lord that you made a way for us to avoid your wrath by sending your son to take that wrath for us on the cross thank you lord for allowing jesus to take upon himself our penalty our punishment so that you were loving us while you are also expressing your justice at the same time we thank you and praise you continue we pray lord to speak to all of our hearts and help us to grow in the knowledge of your love for we pray this in jesus precious and holy name amen god bless you have a good rest of your evening

Channel: Calvary Chapel Ontario

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Keywords: Bible, Bible teaching, Thru-the-Bible, verse by verse, Calvary Chapel, Bible study, Christianity, New Testament, Old Testament

Id: SV6Z6ltG8mI

Length: 54min 24sec (3264 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 11 2021