September 17, 2020: Day 26 – Jeremiah 26

Jeremiah moves his setting from the king’s palace, or at least from addressing the king and the people in the last chapter, to the temple gate.  He spoke in public to all the people who were entering the temple and told them to repent or else God would strike them all down.  He sounds a lot like John the Baptist who came preaching a Gospel of repentance.  As a result of his speaking publicly in the temple all of the priests, the people, and the prophets of the king said that he should die.  They all gathered around him in the temple looking to kill him.  

As a result of this hub bub the king comes to hear what is going on.  So now we move from the religious leaders condemning him to death to the political leader looking to see what the problem is.  In front of the political leaders he tells them all the same story as before, but this time emphasizing that all that he is saying has been given to him by the Lord.  Look at the change in heart that the people have in this chapter: vs.8 “all the people laid hold of him saying – ‘You shall die!'” and then in vs. 16 “all the people said… ‘This man does not deserve the sentence of death.'”

So what changed?  A couple things.  First of all he invoked the name of the Lord.  Secondly, and for the first and only time in Scripture, we see another prophet invoked as someone who prophesied destruction and as a result turned the people and their hearts around back to the Lord.  Look at Micah 3:12 and you see that this Scripture is quoted by the people as what changed the course of history and changed the relationship of God with God’s people, at least in that day.  But then we hear of another prophet who did exactly what Jeremiah did, preach against the city and the temple because of their unfaithfulness, who then fled from Egypt, was tracked down by the secret service and poisoned to death and died in Germany.  Wait, no, that’s Russia taking out their enemies of the state.  But this prophet was tracked down, brought back from Egypt, and then killed by the current king Jehoiakim.  

We see that Jeremiah is saved by a guy named Ahikam who had his  back so he was saved.