Category: Prophetic Stream

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June 14



Jeremiah 22-24

We are in the Prophetic Stream reading with the New American Standard Bible this week.

 

Commentary by Dr. Drake Travis

Lord, the cost of disobedience is so grave.  Give us hearts of obedience. We offer up to you, as the song says, “here’s my heart, o’ take and seal it, seal it for thy courts of above. Amen.

22 – This chapter is a warning to King Jehoiakim.  He reigned until 598 B.C. when the Babylonians were “at the door” and the first (not the final) captivity began for Judeans.  The final caravan of captives occurred 12 years later in 586 B.C. when Zedekiah was king.  Speaking of Zedekiah, all inference points to him being the one spoken to in Jer. 22:2; “hear the word of the Lord, O King…”  Zedekiah ended up witnessing the finale~ in time, but the literature of this chapter takes us back through a listing of the final five kings that covered the last 50+ years of the Kingdom during its demise. Josiah gave goodness a fair effort, but the other four were wretched, demented, and duplicitous to the core. they were unjust, oppressive, robbers, violent, cruel to orphans and widows, and treacherous to the innocent. God gives a last offer to change their ways before ruining the place.  God had offered always to preserve them but the snubbing of God’s reminders and The Covenant was too incessant. The invaders will reverence nothing. They will be like vandals with clubs storming through a jewelry store made of glass shelves [to use some modern picture].  The violence, the death/killing, the fires … there won’t even be any time for mourning or funerals. And no allies will come to help.  The chapter ends railing upon Jehoiachin; the 4th of the last 5 kings. His uncle Zedekiah actually followed him and none of Jehoiachin’s children ever ended up being king.

 
23 – As Hitler was ransacking Europe and looking to go in all directions with his plan to conquer and absorb. There were two opinions: Churchill in England was telling people to prepare for war or be conquered, and there was Chamberlain in England who was telling them to relax, rest, and be well for “there is peace in our time.”  The prophets that Jeremiah is scolding were oblivious as Chamberlain and they were dark as darkness in their hearts, their words, and their plans. They cared nothing for God’s people. The people would be scattered from following these false prophets.  Later, God would gather them again and one day reign. This “Righteous Branch of David” is One who will reign in a Messianic era.  That was coming.  For now, there are lying prophets to shush.  They are using Baal, bringing on disaster, doing deals with evil, wretched as Gomorrah.  These prophets spread evil across the land, they do NOT speak for God, yet claim that they do while touting about peace as they work their evil.  Because of them, all will be cast out.  God wants a memorandum to go national: The prophets claim they have the Word of the Lord – but it didn’t come from me-says the Lord!
 
24 – The people God would preserve [1] and the people God would allow to be decimated [2] are illustrated as two baskets of figs.  One was like first fruits, ripe and sweet and desirable. These were akin to the initial captives taken to Babylon in 597 B.C.  Jehoiachin was on this trek of those hauled away as slaves to Babylon, as were Ezekiel and Daniel. [Remember we read Daniel last winter.] He was a young teen of about 13 walking to Babylon. He started out a slave and became virtual regent of the country!  Strangely enough, God carried these ones away to preserve them; they were the “good basket of figs.”  The second basket were the ones who thought they would stay in Judah and call up help from Egypt to resist the Babylonians who were on their final push to take all of Judah.  Those who stay back, like rotten figs, will be only fit for discarding. Their future is bleak, they will be cursed, and ridiculed and devastated.  Rotten figs get thrown out and buried in a compost heap. The people who remain to fight Babylon have a similar fate.
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June 7



Jeremiah 18-21

We are in the Prophetic Stream and using the New Living Translation this week.

 

Commentary by Dr. Drake Travis

Lord, we get the message that you desire us to walk with you.  You so badly don’t want us to go astray as we see what happened in Judah during this season in their history. It’s so important that we learn from what they lived through.  Teach us Lord, to walk by faith in you.  Amen.
 

18 – The potter and the clay illustration is spot on. God working with Israel and a potter working clay are identical situations.  Something has gone very wrong and it it time to flatten this piece of clay and reshape/build it up again…[Judah being the piece of clay].  And symbolically, the clay is lecturing the potter claiming the clay is in charge – not the potter! What?!  Most all of us have worked with others and when there turns out to be a rebel in the building/on the team/in the gathering, we want them to shape up and help the cause, don’t we?  And when they cause far more trouble than the worth that they bring, the sentiment is to get rid of them. And if they persist in creating squabbling or become such contrarians that it is not even possible to press forward until they are gone, then they are to be removed.  Like then/like now/like still –> Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, as God told Saul around 1030 B.C. thereabouts. Now, it isn’t just Saul, it’s all of the Southern Kingdom. They are behaving worse than the neighboring pagans. They are leaving God little choice but to smash them flat and start over. I think He will. The potter’s illustration causes Jeremiah to be aggressively shunned.

 
19 – Jeremiah takes a clay jar, as God commanded, and he goes to the southeast corner of Jerusalem where the refuse was thrown and burned. Jeremiah gave a message that the place was soon to be a refuse heap of slaughtered Judeans that have been refusing to listen and yield to the Lord of Heaven and His Army (of angels). They have spent generations intermittently worshiping Baal and building a monument to one thing: their own stupidity!.  They’ve burned incense to false gods, like the stars & gods of the sky.  What fools they have deliberately turned themselves into!  And it is rather intriguing that Jesus stood in this exact area, in this gateway about 600 years later and used a zinger of a play-on-words to tell about how the Pharisees and their ilk were in danger of the fires of hell as the trash fire burned behind him.  In less than a week, they killed Jesus for this.  What do you think they will do to Jeremiah?
 
20 – Well, Pashhur [“Pah-SHOE-er”], the son of the Priest in charge of the Temple, arrests Jeremiah and has him whipped and put in stocks in the Temple gate called “Benjamin”. Now think a moment: is Jeremiah arrested and whipped for lying or for telling the truth? … chew on that one, folks!   Jeremiah is released then has a petition for God that is understandable. It really hit Jeremiah wrong that he was treated this way. –understandable if one puts themselves in Jeremiah’s sandals for a day. Don’t you think?
 
21 – Jeremiah is sought out as the leaders of the Temple ask Jeremiah to pray to God for relief in Judah from the Babylonians who were besieging the country and approaching Jerusalem!  [this coincides with II Kings 24, btw] The nightmare was upon them for their centuries of disobedience and derelict leadership.  Verse 7 is quite “the riot act” to read: “I will send war, disease, and famine…showing no pity, mercy, or compassion.”  They could surrender to Babylon (as prisoners) or die. for Jerusalem was to be turned into an ash heap.  God was dropping the gavel. The Priests and Judges were altogether corrupt and God was fighting them now.  Why would they call on God now after disobeying Him for so long that no one even remembered what it was to follow him?!  Jer. 27:6 clarifies matters as to God’s perspective regarding this turn of events: God refers to Nebuchadnezzar; King of Babylon as His servant. If God’s people won’t listen to God and clean up their ways then God will send an enemy to level the city and let God start over.  Yeeeesh, obeying would have been so much more simpler.