Latest / Journey Elgin / Journey Through Scripture -Jeremiah 39-44 & 2 Kings 25
Transcript
- Phillip Thomas: It's good to see you today. Welcome to our journey through Scripture. We are going to be in Jeremiah chapters 39 through 44 today. Jeremiah 39 through 44. And there's a little bit in 2 Kings 25, ⁓ but mainly Jeremiah 39 through 44. Okay. ⁓ So we've just finished Lamentations, which was the Jeremiah lamenting. the destruction of Jerusalem. Remember, we've already had the exile. People have already been taken, and then they could have lived peacefully. God told them to try to live peacefully with the Babylonians, but they refused and rebelled, and so King Nebuchadnezzar has come, and now he has destroyed the temple, destroyed Jerusalem, and so now we're in the aftermath of that. And what happened is no longer did they have a king. You know, had Zedekiah, who was kind of the king that Nebuchadnezzar allowed to be there. Well, now it's more of a governor. And so there's a governor named Gedaliah, and he has made governor over Judah. And you can read a little bit in 2 Kings 25 verses 22 through 26, mention him as the governor. So does Jeremiah 39 through 44. So that's what we're going to focus on today. So Nebuchadnezzar gave the charge concerning Jeremiah. Okay. So sorry about that. Getaliyah becomes governor. Jeremiah enters the picture and he's going to become a, ⁓ you know, kind of a confidant, if you will, to Getaliyah. But Jeremiah has got caught up in all of this. So Jerusalem has fallen. ⁓ Many of the people were being taken back to exile again. So a lot of the people were being taken back into captivity. And so there was just going to be a few people left. And Jeremiah actually gets caught up and they are taking Jeremiah back to ⁓ Babylon. And he says, The king of Babylon gave charge concerning Jeremiah to Nebuzaradon, the captain of the guard, saying, Take him and look after him and do him no harm, but do to him just as he says to you." ⁓ So basically, Jeremiah ⁓ is being treated well. At the end of chapter 39, says, ⁓ this is the Lord speaking to Jeremiah, says, But I will deliver you in that day, says the Lord, and you shall not be given into the hand of the men whom you are afraid. For I will surely deliver you and you shall not fall by the sword, but your life shall be as a prize to you because you have put your trust in me, says the Lord." So the Lord reiterates to Jeremiah, you're going to be okay. I'm going to take care of you. so they actually give, the captain of the guard gives Jeremiah the opportunity to go wherever he wants to. It says, ⁓ pretty interesting, chapter 40, verse 2, the captain of the guard took Jeremiah and said to him, the Lord your God has pronounced this doom on this place. Now the Lord has brought it and has done just as he said, because you people have sinned against the Lord and not obeyed his voice. Isn't that interesting? The captain of the guard of Babylon had listened to Jeremiah apparently before and knew what he had said. Therefore this thing has come upon you and now look, I free you this day. from the chains that were on your hand. If it seems good to you to come with me to Babylon, come and I will look after you. But if it seems wrong for you to come to Babylon, remain here. See all the land is before you wherever it seems good and convenient for you to go, go there." So, ⁓ Jeremiah decides to stay with the people. He does not go to Babylon. So he goes back to Jerusalem, but Jerusalem has been destroyed. So now there's a gathering at Mitspah. ⁓ And in that area is where Gedaliah ⁓ is ⁓ gathering and beginning his administration as governor. And so Gedaliah ⁓ listens to Jeremiah and listens to the Lord, and he says this, he says, Do not be afraid to serve the Chaldeans or the Babylonians. Dwell in the land, serve the king of Babylon, and it shall be well with you. As for me, I will indeed dwell in Mitzvah and serve the Chaldeans who come to us." ⁓ So he's saying, we're going to try to live in peace. We're not going to rebel. We're going to live in peace. This did not go over well with everyone. ⁓ Specifically, there's a man named Ishmael who wanted to kill Gedaliah for this. He was kind of... under contract from the king of the Ammonites. And Gedaliah was warned by, Johannin warned him and ⁓ interesting, says, let me go please and I will kill Ishmael the son of ⁓ Nathaniah and no one will know it. Why should he murder you so that all the Jews who are gathered to you would be scattered in the remnant in Judah parish? But Gedaliah said to Johannin, ⁓ You shall not do this thing for you speak falsely concerning Ishmael." It's interesting. So he makes a decision. He's not going to be proactive ⁓ and he does not believe that Ishmael is going to try to kill him. Get into chapter 41. Within the first few verses, Ishmael kills Gedaliah. So now you had this governor who was trying to keep the people there, which is what God wanted. They were going to have to ride out this punishment, but then God would restore them. That's been the promise the whole time. Gedaliah was going to stay, but now he is murdered. And then if you continue to read in chapter 41, eventually the guy, Johannin, he catches up with Ishmael and he kills Ishmael. Well, actually, sorry, Ishmael actually escaped from Johannin. and went to the Ammonites. And so we see that you have a political situation starting to unfold here. So now you have Johanan, who kind of is a default leader, so Gedaliah is gone. But now they are very afraid of what Babylon may do. So verse 17 says, and they departed and dwelt in the habitation of Chimham, which is near Bethlehem. as they went on their way to Egypt because of the Chaldeans, for they were afraid of them because Ishmael, the son of Nathanael, had murdered Gedaliah, whom the king of Babylon had made governor in the land. So they are afraid of what Nebuchadnezzar is going to do, because not only had Ishmael murdered Gedaliah, he had also murdered some of the Babylonians who were there with Gedaliah. And so they immediately start to head towards Egypt. But they're in Bethlehem, and so this is probably a pretty good group of people ⁓ that had come from surrounding areas, had come to Mitzvah as the Jewish people, kind of to be the remnant. But now they are fleeing again. So they've kind of already made up their mind to go to Egypt. However, they began, they realized, ⁓ well, maybe we should ⁓ inquire of the Lord. So they asked Jeremiah, verse 42, or chapter 42 says, this is to Jeremiah, please let our petition be acceptable to you and pray for us to the Lord your God for all this remnant since we are left, but a few many as you can now see that the Lord your God may show us the way in which we should walk and the thing which we should do. And so Jeremiah said, of course I'll do that, but I'm going to tell you exactly what the Lord says. And so verse five, they said to Jeremiah, let the Lord be true and faithful witness between us if we do not do according to everything which the Lord your God sends us by you, whether it is pleasing or displeasing, we will obey the voice of the Lord to whom we send to you, that it may be well with us when we obey the voice of the Lord our God. All right, so you get the picture. They are very pious. They are asking Jeremiah to inquire of the Lord and that they promise they will listen. So then Jeremiah comes back after 10 days, says, If you will still remain in this land, then I will build you and not pull you down, and I will plant you and not pluck you up. For I relent concerning the disaster that I have brought upon you. Do not be afraid of the King of Babylon, of whom you are afraid. Do not be afraid of him, says the Lord, for I am with you to save you and deliver you from his hand." and I will show you mercy that he may have mercy on you and cause you to return to your own land." So what God says is you need to stay here and don't be afraid of the Babylonians. Don't be afraid of the king. It's going to be okay. And then he goes on in the last part of chapter 42 to say, don't disobey me. Right? Says, if you do, then it will go bad for you. Right? And so then the response of the people to Jeremiah in response to God speaking through Jeremiah in chapter 43 ⁓ verse 2 says, you speak falsely to Jeremiah. They basically say, you're lying, Jeremiah. The Lord God has not sent you to say, do not go to Egypt to dwell there. But Baruch the son of Neriah has set you against us to deliver us into the hand of the Chaldeans. that they may put us to death or carry us away to captive Babylon. So they went to the land of Egypt, for they did not obey the voice of the Lord, and they went as far as ⁓ Tapanis." Okay, so basically they listen, they hear, and they decide, you know what, that's not the answer we wanted. They'd already made up their mind, and they just wanted confirmation. And whenever they didn't get confirmation, they just said, ⁓ you don't know what you're talking about. I think this is pretty instructive. We need to be careful because a lot of times we kind of make up our mind on the direction we need to go and then we may seek God to confirm that direction. And are we truly going to seek God's help? Maybe before we make up our mind, before we make up a decision, we should inquire of the Lord then. and ask for His wisdom as we make the decision. Don't make the decision and then ask God to confirm the decision for you. But also, this just shows how ridiculous we are as humans. They have seen how Jeremiah has prophesied and everything that he's prophesied has come true, the good, the bad, all of it. They've seen the ramifications of not being faithful to God, they've literally seen the temple destroyed in front of them, and they still will not listen and completely submit to God. They still want to be the ones in charge of their own destiny, if you will. And so we go to chapter 44, and it talks about ⁓ punishment that they are going to receive in Egypt. And God basically just starts wailing on them and kind of goes back and reminds them of how horrible they have been in verse 7 of chapter 44. Now therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the God of Israel, why do you commit this great evil against yourselves, to cut off from you man and woman, child, infant out of Judah, leaving none to remain, in that you provoke me to wrath with these words of your hands? burning incense to other gods in the lands of Egypt. So they're already starting their old habits again, where you have gone to dwell, that you may cut yourselves off and be accursed and have a reproach among all the nations of the earth. Have you forgotten the wickedness of your fathers, the wickedness of the kings of Judah, the wickedness of your wives, your own wickedness, the wickedness of your wives, which they committed in the land of Judah, in the streets of Jerusalem? They have not been humbled to this day, nor have they feared. They have not walked in my law or in my statutes that I set before you and your fathers." And he just continues on. ⁓ basically you get to verse 15, says, the men who knew that their wives had burned incense to other God ⁓ and who now dwelt in the land of Egypt responded to Jeremiah, said, Verse 16, as for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we will not listen to you, but we will certainly do whatever has gone out of our own mouth to burn incense to the Queen of Heaven, to pour out drink offerings to her as we have done. We and our fathers, our kings, our princes in the cities and Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, for then we had plenty of food, were well off, saw no trouble. But since we stopped burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, We have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword and famine." So basically what they're saying is they can remember when times were okay. Now they were probably remembering that falsely, but they were, things were okay. Things hadn't started spiraling out of control. And when that was happening, they were worshiping the queen of heaven, which by the way, is no connection to the one true God. That's not his queen. This is very ugly pagan stuff. And so in their mind, all of a sudden, they're like, the reason things bad happened to us is because we quit worshipping, we didn't worship the pagan god right. Rather than remembering and trusting that the reason bad things happened was because you started worshipping the queen of heaven. And, know, this is just a convenient excuse to do again what they want to do, rather than to recognize that it was their idolatry that led to the destruction of Jerusalem. They think that it's because they quit practicing the idolatry that that is what led to the destruction. So it is really sad. This is a group of people who have completely lost their way. and are trying to find their own way out, and it's not going to work very well. Continue on in chapter 44. You get to verse 27, "'Behold, I will watch over them for adversity and not for good.'" So the Lord, He's not going to put up with this. "'And all of the men of Judah who are in the land of Egypt shall be consumed by sword and by famine until there is an end to them.'" Yet a small number who escape the sword shall return from the land of Egypt to the land of Judah. And all the remnant of Judah who have gone to the land of Egypt to dwell there shall know whose words will stand, mine or theirs." So there's God's word, and what he says is these people are going to be punished, they're going to die by the sword and by famine, and then there's their word that says, no, because we're worshiping the queen of heaven now, everything's going to be fine. God's basically saying, let's find out. We'll find out. And there's going to be some of you that are going to be able to have a chance to remember this. And he says, and this shall be assigned to you, says the Lord, that I will punish you in this place that you may know my words will surely stand against you for adversity. So sad and frustrating. And God again is going to punish And he's still going to give a remnant the chance to do what is right. You know, sometimes we see God in the Old Testament as this mean God who just wants to punish and stuff like that. But you know what? He was so patient, so merciful, so kind, and the people continued to spit in his face and worship the queen of heaven, turn their back on him. And so, yeah, it led to punishment. And even in that, He continued to offer redemption and he continued to prepare the remnant to start over again. All right. So we're going to stop there for the next time. We're going to kind of be in quite a different places in Ezekiel. ⁓ We'll hit 2 Chronicles 36, the last of it. It kind of talks about the fall of Jerusalem. Now we're going to look at Ezekiel's perspective on this same timeframe. So read Ezekiel chapter 12. Also Psalm 89, it kind of is a Psalm during this time frame. So Ezekiel 12 and then 19, Ezekiel 33, Yeah, 32 and 33, and then Ezekiel 25 through 28. So Ezekiel 25 through 28, Ezekiel 32 and 33, Ezekiel 19 and 12, and Psalm 89. All right, we will see you on...