10/03/2020 – Day 132 – Jeremiah 32-36 – Questions within commentary, after your reading..:
“A nation that cannot preserve itself ought to die, and it will die — die in the the grasp of the evils it is too feeble to overthrow.” Senator Morris Shepherd – 1875 – 1941 (Morris was a democratic senator and a congressman from Morris County, Texas. He is known as the “father of prohibition” and “author of the Federal Credit Union act of 1934”.)
- Chapter 32: God gives Jeremiah an object lesson, asking him to indeed buy the field from his cousin Hanamel. How is this an object lesson? So, right after Jeremiah delivers the signed purchase deed to Baruch, from his prison cell, he prays in 32:17: “Ah, Lord God! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for You.” (We also saw this in Luke 1:37) Let’s presume: Biden and the cultural Marxists get’s elected. With that horrifying news: 1a) How is our position similar to Jeremiah’s at this point? (We can write an expose at this point, no?) 1b) A little more challenging: How is it different? . 2) How was it spiritually edifying and beneficial for Jeremiah and is it likewise for us to be praying this same prayer right now, at these two respective moments?
3) My book “Be Decisive” notes that God’s protection for Jeremiah could in fact be evidenced by the fact that He has him in prison at this point. How so? Hint: It is 537 B.C. – 1 year before the fall of Judah and Jerusalem with the city already besieged by the Babylonians.
Chapter 33 – ” Excellence of the Restored Nation” What time span(s) is God revealing to Jeremiah? Is it: 1) The return 70 years later from Babylonian captivity? 2) The birth of the Messiah? ; 3) The 1000 year reign?; or the Kingdom of Heaven, never-ending? (we should be mindful of this in other books of the Bible as well)
Timeout here for a little historical timeline context:
-There were two sieges of Jerusalem by the Babylonians: The first was 597 B.C. with Nebuchadnezzer deposing Jehoakim as king, and installing Zedekiah as a “figure head-vassal” king after a siege lasting 18 to 30 months. The 2nd and decisive fall was in 587 B.C. Zedekiah is blinded and exiled to Babylon. Both sieges resulted in people being exiled to Babylon. An interesting sidebar on Ezekiel, the prophet. Ezekiel was exiled to Babylon after the 1st siege. Ezekiel , younger than Jeremiah, may have been Jeremiah’s pupil. Interestingly, both Ezekiel and Jeremiah ended up praching the same message to the nation of Israel: The certainty of Judah’s punishment for their sins. (Ezekiel from Babylon and Jeremiah from Jerusalem.) Moral of the story; It doesn’t matter where God places you, just preach in the breach!
Chapter 34 – Zedekiah Warned by God:
Through Jeremiah, God tells Zedekiah that he profaned God’s name by repudiating his covenant with God in the temple by reinstituting slavery of Jews after they had been given their liberty. The law mandated that every Hebrew man or woman should be set free every 7th year. The proclamation ends with: “Behold, I will command and cause them to return (the Babylonians) to the city. They will fight against it and take it and burn it with fire; and I will make the cities of Judah desolation without inhabitant.”
Chapter 35 – The Obediant Rechabites – See previous post – God uses the Rechabites as an example of faithful obediance.
Chapter 36: The Scroll Read in the Temple and Destroyed by the King Jehoiakim
Behold: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” Matthew 24:35 // “The grass withers and the flowers fall , but the word of our God stands forever.” (Isaiah 40:8 NIV; quoted in 1 Peter 1: 24-25)
I am going to quote from my “Be Decisive” , one of my companion Jeremiah books (Location 2818, lol), Chapter 10 of the books “Contemporary Events and Eternal Truths”
Note – We are actually moving back in time in the chapter 36. This is the fourth year of Jehoiakim’s reign, 605 B.C.
“God gives His Word (vv 1-4, 17-18). This is what theologians call inspiration — that miraculous working of the Holy Spirit through a human writer so that what was written was the divine Word that God wanted recorded (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1: 20-21) Inspiration is not some kind of “heavenly dictation,” as though God completely bypassed the writer, for the authors of the various books of the Bible have their own distinctive styles and vocabularies. Without making him a robot, God guided Jeremiah in his choice of words; Jeremiah spoke these words to his secretary, Baruch; and Baruch wrote them down in the scroll.
It’s interesting to see how different people responded to the Word of God. There were three public readings of the book, and the first one was to the people in the temple. (Jer 36:10). There’s no record that the crowd responded in any special way. One man, Micaiah, however, became concerned because of what he had heard (v. 11). He was the grandson of Shaphan, the man who read the newly found book of the law to King Josiah (2 Kings 22), so it’s no wonder he had an interest in God’s Word.
Miciah told the princes about the book, and they asked to hear it, so Baruch rad it to them (Jer 36: 12-19). Along with Micaiah, the officials trembled when they hear the Word (v 16) for they knew that the nation was in great danger. They hid the scroll, told Baruch and Jeremiah to hide, and then went to report to the king that he needed to hear what Jeremiah had written.
The reading of the scroll was before the king (vv 21-26) and was done by Jehudi, who may have been one of the scribes. The king treated God’s Word like fuel for the fire! In spite of the remonstrances of three of his officials, the king continued cutting and burning the scroll until it was completely destroyed. The royal attendants who also heard the reading of the scroll showed no fear and thereby encouraged Jehoiakim in his evil deed.
Over the centuries, God’s enemies have tried to destroy the Word of God but have always failed. They forget what Jesus said about the Word: ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” (Matt 24:35) “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:8 NIV; quoted in 1 Peter 1: 24-25). Translators and preachers of the Word have been persecuted and martyred, but the truth of God still stands. “
Soli Deo Gloria!