PSA Bible Reading Challenge 2023-2024

Do you remember not that many chapters back where God told Jeremiah to tell the people of Israel who had been taken into exile into Babylon to build houses, plant gardens, have a whole gaggle of children and get comfortable because this  is where you will be living for a loooong time.  But then he tells the people who have been taken to Egypt that they are going to die any day now.  Don’t get too comfortable because it simply is not going to last.  You are going to be destroyed.  Well, that is simply because the people who went to Egypt disobeyed God and didn’t remain in the land like he told them.

Here, this is a message written by Baruch the scribe for Jeremiah geared much more toward those who had fled to Egypt.  He tells the people: “I am going to break down what I have built, and pluck up what I have planted… I am going to bring disaster on all flesh.”  This is geared directly to Jeremiah to tell the people of Israel who are in Egypt.  But he tells Jeremiah that even in the midst of all this destruction he will still maintain and keep the life of Jeremiah in the middle of all this.  He will witness the destruction but his prize of war will be his own life.  Not sure if that is a super great incentive knowing that all that you love and own is gone.  A bit like what we see happen to Job.

There is a pretty intense interchange between Jeremiah and the people of Israel in this chapter.  Jeremiah tells the people, especially and probably exclusively the people of Israel who are in Egypt, that their time in Egypt will be marked with destruction.  He gives them the history of them not being willing to listen to his words and their continued sacrifice to foreign gods and their desire to leave their home land to come to Egypt where they thought they would be safe.  He tells them, you will not be safe in Egypt, you will die, all of you, women, children, and men.  He chastises them for leaving their home land without a remnant and just fleeing without taking any consideration to the fact that God had given them that land for all eternity.  But they chose to leave it and settle in Egypt.

The people actually respond!  They say, you know, all that you are saying, that we should not worship other gods, that we should turn back to the Lord or else we will be destroyed, we are not going to listen to you.  Look at vs.16 where the people say: “We are not going to listen to you.”  In fact, they go one step further.  They said because we stopped worshiping other gods, and specifically because we stopped offering sacrifices to the queen of heaven then destruction has befallen us.  They had been worshiping Aphrodite and Venus and they thought that because they had turned from these false gods to the Lord that they now found themselves in a foreign land, in Egypt.  They promised to go back to worshiping these false gods and were convinced that then everything would be made right.

Don’t we often rely upon that which is false and turn away from God and attribute our success to either our own skills or the alignment of certain factors that have nothing to do with God?  That is not what God would want from us.  He wants us to align ourselves with him.  Now, we are not promised that we will have success if we align ourselves with God.  In fact, in the New Testament we are told that we will face even more persecution and hardship if we are truly a disciple of Jesus Christ.  Who wants that?  So there is no I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.  But we do know that Jesus has saved us from sin and given us eternal life.  So we have that going for us.

Daddy, you are in heaven, let my life make your name holy, bring your kingdom here on earth through us, your church family.  Let your will, which is always for our good, be done through us.  As your will is done in heaven, so let us do it on earth.  Give us today what we need for tomorrow.  Forgive us our sins just as we forgive the sins of others, and please don’t make it conditional as to whether or not or if we forgive the sins of others.  We are trying.  Help us to not put you to the test as you always lead us in a direction that is good for our lives and always give us what we need when we are tempted by our own desires.  Snatch us away from the devil who is trying to divide up and separate us so that our desires and our wishes become stronger than our unity and our faithfulness to you and your church.  And then as a footnote, just in case we think we are in power, your kingdom and your power and your glory reign over all eternity.  Remind us that your kingdom and your power and your glory are still and will always be in charge.  Amen.

So, yesterday we saw that the remnant asked Jeremiah if he would ask God what they should do, go to Egypt or not.  Jeremiah tells them God says no, do not go to Egypt.  They call Jeremiah a liar and that he is a spy of Babylon and is only looking to keep them in this land so the king of Babylon can have his way with them, and they go to Egypt anyway.   Keep in mind when they go they don’t just go with their families but they take all of the people that were left behind including Jeremiah.   They arrive in Egypt and God tells Jeremiah to do another object lesson.  He takes some stones and buries them in the mud outside of Pharaoh’s palace.  The object lesson is this.  Jeremiah tells the people of Israel that in a short period of time Babylon will come and invade the land of Egypt and the king of Babylon will set up his throne right over these buried rocks, which happened to be right outside of Pharaoh’s palace.  When Babylon does come then those who fled to Egypt will all be taken to Babylon, and some of them won’t even make it that far.  See, it would have been better to obey God originally and stay behind.

We don’t read about what their reaction is yet, but we get a pretty good feeling that this is really going to happen.  We have a pretty good idea that in the coming chapters Babylon is on their way.  If God says it, we can pretty much be assured that it is going to happen.

So in the last chapter this Ishmael killed the king who had remained behind and placed there by Babylon.  Johanan had come and taken care of Ishmael and gathered up the remnant that was scattered around and they made plans to go to Egypt and flee there because they were afraid that Babylon would wipe them out because of the death and destruction that Ishmael had brought about.  But they waited to go until they were able to ask Jeremiah if he could confirm through God whether they should go or not.

This is where we find ourselves now.  They ask Jeremiah to pray to God and ask what they should do.  Jeremiah says he will pray to God but that whatever the message is they are to listen to it.  After 10 days God speaks to Jeremiah.  Jeremiah calls together all of the military leaders to tell them what God had told them.  He tells them to stay put.  Do not go to Egypt.  I know that you made plans to go to Egypt, but do not go to Egypt.  Stay here, the king of Babylon will not only leave you alone, but he will provide you with things that you need so that you can build houses and plant gardens.  Stay here in your home land and stay put and I will take care of you.

But if you follow through on your plans and head to Egypt, you will be excrement.  No, really, that is in there.  Look at vs.18, you will be an execration, which literally means an object of cursing.  So, maybe I made up excrement, but sure it sounds like it.  I had to look execration up.  Jeremiah is basically warning them to go back to the drawing board and rip up their plans of going to Egypt or else they will all die.  I’m not sure they are going to like that.  What happens when you hear a voice that you know is God’s voice but you completely disagree with it?  How do you handle it?  We’ll see that tomorrow.

There is a whole lot of unrest happening here in this chapter.  Keep in mind that Judah has been taken off into captivity and Jerusalem was burned to the ground.  But the Babylonians had appointed a person who was going to be the  king for any of the stragglers who were left behind. That was Gedaliah, and he and his family were in Mizpah, that’s where they set up shop.  The previous chapter we saw a warning that Gedaliah received from Johanan that this guy Ishmael was planning on coming and killing Gedaliah.  Gedaliah poo pooed it and said that would never happen to me.

It happens to him, Gedaliah is killed in this chapter by Ishmael, and he also kills a bunch of Chaldeans (read Babylonians) and then a bunch of very spiritual Jews who came to worship and offer sacrifices.  Ishmael basically made a hot mess in trying to overthrow Gedaliah.  Johanan sees all that Ishmael does and brings a group of fighters with him to drive Ishmael out.  He does and then brings the people who were left over to Egypt in order to protect them since Ishmael had made such a hot mess and killed a whole bunch of people that he should not have, including a bunch of Babylonians.

Two lessons here.  We are never immune to that which we want to avoid.  It will probably come and get us sooner or later.  That was the state of Gedaliah that he was living in denial that he could ever be subjected to what other rulers were subjected to, namely an overthrow.  Then on the part of Ishmael we can read that we should never take matters into our own hands especially when the prophet of the Lord tells us to do certain things and to live in a certain (accept the rule of the Babylonians because it will pass over time) way.  

Jeremiah seems to be given a favored person status by the Babylonians.  Isn’t it interesting that with his own people he was thrown in jail, he was mocked, he was left in a pit to die, but for those who were invading the land he was treated as a bit of a hero.  We find him approached by the captain of the guard who said if you want to travel to Babylon with me, you can.  I will take care of you  in Babylon and I will be sure that you have everything that you need.  But, you are free to do as you please.  Basically only Jeremiah and those who were coming in from the field, the poorest in the land, were given liberty to move and live as they pleased.  All those in Jerusalem were taken off to Babylon in captivity.  The captain of the guard gives Jeremiah these options of freedom and lets him decide on his own and then he gives him food to live on for a while as well as a present.  What in the what?  

Jeremiah stayed in the land and decided not to go off to Babylon but rather to join up with those who were left behind and were tending the crops who were left in the land.  We finish the chapter with a bit of an impending issue that is about to come up.  There is one who is looking to kill Gedaliah who was placed in charge of all those who remained in the land.  As Scripture calls them: “those of the poorest of the land who had not been taken into exile to Babylon.”  One of Gedaliah’s helpers asks if he can go and kill the person who is looking to kill him, and Gedaliah says, nah, that’s not a great idea.  I’m good. Let’s  see what happens next chapter, if he really is good or not.

Jerusalem is captured.  It seems like they did put up a fight and did not surrender as Jeremiah had suggested that they did.  Look at how we know that.  Vs.1 tells us that in the 9th year of Zedekiah Babylon besieged Jerusalem.  In vs.11 we read that there was a breach in Jerusalem which allowed the troops to flood in and conquer the city.  It took two years.  King Zedekiah fled on foot to escape what might happen to him.  But he was captured and all of his children and his high officials were slaughtered in front of him and his eyes were gouged as a sign that the last thing he would see with his eyes was the death of his family.  Yeah, the Babylonians were no joke.  They then bound him and the rest of the people in Jerusalem and made them march to Babylon.  They left behind to care for the land some of the poorest of the region who probably had not even been allowed to stay in the city.

Here you will see a map that allows us to see the distance between Jerusalem and Babylon which was about 900 miles, and we read that when Ezra did the trip in about 5 months in Ezra 7:8 and surrounding verses.  That is a hike, not quite as long as the AT, but probably has a lot more dangerous variables to it than the AT.

There is one person who is saved, and that is the Ethiopian Eunuch,  Ebed-melech, who had saved Jeremiah from the pit.  The king also saved Jeremiah and says that he should be treated well.  Interesting that the foreign king looks to save and treat well Jeremiah who had encouraged Israel to surrender.  Hmmm, something doesn’t seem quite right.  But we do see that if they had surrendered then they and the city would have been saved.  

The picture depicted of the king is one of someone who is incredibly unsure of not only what to do, but who are his advisers to whom he ought to listen?  The chapter begins with a listing of some of the prophets of the king who were outraged by what Jeremiah was saying, basically which was to accept a terms of surrender to the Babylonians and you will be spared.  If you do not, then this city and everyone in it will be burned.  They complained because they said that this message was bad morale for the soldiers who were defending the city.  Yes, that would be correct.  If one of the prophets of the king says that it is no use fighting, and in fact fighting will only make matters worse, then if you are a soldier defending the city it just might put that thought in your head and it would inevitably lower  morale.

So, as a result of Jeremiah’s preaching this controversial and toxic message we see the request by the other interested parties, or really the demand, is that the king put Jeremiah to death.  The king says exactly as Pilate said to the mob who wanted to crucify Jesus, he is in your  midst, he is yours to do as you please.  I will not stop you.  So they take him and put him in a dryish cistern waiting for him to die a very slow and painful death without food and water.  Along came an Ethiopian eunuch (see Acts 8:26-40) who lobbied on Jeremiah’s behalf with the king in order to save him.  The king, who previously had given the green light for the death of Jeremiah, now gives the green light in order for him to be saved.

Immediately after he is pulled up from the pit, vs.14ff, the king sends for him and makes a secret pinky swear promise type pact that Jeremiah ought to give him advice on what he ought to do and he promised his life would be safe if he did tell him.  But he told Jeremiah not to tell a soul about their pinky promise deal that they had going on.  Jeremiah tells him to surrender.  It is interesting that the chapter ends with Jeremiah in the court of the king until Jerusalem surrenders, setting the stage to see whether the vision which the Lord had given Jeremiah would come true or not.  

Without a doubt the king is depicted here as incredibly weak and someone who had no idea how to use his power for the good of the people.  Every decision he made he looked over his shoulder to ensure that he would not be harmed by it.  

The Chaldeans were invading Jerusalem when the Egyptian army started moving toward Jerusalem.  The Chaldeans retreated and moved away.  At that moment the king of  Israel wanted to know if  God had said something to Jeremiah.  Jeremiah says yes!   God did say something to me.  He said do not be encouraged because the Chaldeans retreated.   They will  be back and they will burn Jerusalem to the ground.  The message is consistent, but the king was hoping, just hoping, that somehow the message of destruction and doom had changed.  But it had not.  If you look at vs.10 you see the prophet said that even if the Chaldeans had only a handful of wounded men, they would still rise up and defeat you.  

Jeremiah, in the meantime, is arrested for what looked like deserting Jerusalem to help the Chaldeans when he was just trying to claim his land as a rightful heir.  As a result he is thrown into prison and remains in prison for much of the rest of this writing.