This contains a series of five teachings on the book of Jeremiah, presented by the Reverend John W. Howe. The title of the first teaching is Introduction. Let's turn to chapter one of the prophecy of Jeremiah. I want to give you some background today, and we won't be going very far into the book, this particular session. it opens with Jeremiah identifying the time frame in which he ministered and mentioning a number of the kings who reigned at that time. The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anatoth in the land of Benjamin, that's fairly near to Jerusalem, to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah, the son of Ammon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign.

So he tells us very clearly when the Lord called him, in the thirteenth year of the reign of King Josiah. It also came in the days of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, and there were several others, in fact, until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month. Zedekiah was the last king of Judah, and they were taken off into Babylonian captivity.

Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I consecrated you. I appointed you a prophet to the nations.

Then I said, Ah, Lord God, behold, I do not know how to speak. I am only a youth. But the Lord said to me, Do not say I am only a youth, for to all to whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak.

Be not afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord. Then the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth, and the Lord said to me, Behold, I have put my words in your mouth. See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.

and the word of the Lord came to me saying Jeremiah what do you see and I said I see a rod of almond and the Lord said to me you have seen well for I am watching over my word to perform it the word of the Lord came to me a second time saying what do you see and I said I see a boiling pot facing away from the north then the Lord said to me out of the north evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land. For lo, I am calling the tribes of the kingdoms of the north, says the Lord, and they shall come and everyone shall set his throne at the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem and against all the cities of Judah. I've given you just a little sketch up here on the blackboard to remind you of a time frame and I've just put round figures there to just give you a sense of it.

We won't have a quiz at the end. but if you dated the exodus at somewhere around 1300 BC you know that Moses led the people out of their bondage in Egypt and through 40 years of wandering in the wilderness and after his leadership came to a close Joshua picked up the mantle of leadership and led them as they went into the land of Canaan and went about the business of capturing the land it was not all at once In fact, the Lord says, little by little, if I gave it to you all at once, you couldn't handle it. So as you are able to take the land, I will drive out the Canaanites before you.

And Joshua presided over a time in which there really was one person. Like unto Moses, Joshua was the one person in whom the government was really vested during that period. Following his leadership, the judges came and they were sort of somewhere in between a presidency and a supreme court.

They were people who basically passed judgment on the application of God's word to the various specific situations. And there's a cycle that runs through the period of the judges where Israel would cry out to the Lord and he would protect them from their enemies and he would build them up and they would begin to prosper and then they'd begin to take it for granted and forget the Lord and fall away from him, get very sloppy about their obedience and even allow themselves to be affected by the Canaanitish world climate that was around them and some of the Canaanitish practices. And so at that point the Lord would allow somebody to come in and womp on the Israelites for a while until they began to be in desperate enough trouble that they'd cry out to him again and they'd go through repentance and it would say, then the Lord raised up so-and-so to be the judge, Samson or whoever it was.

After the judges came Saul. The people demanded a king. God said, if you really want one, I'll give you one, but you aren't going to be happy with what you get.

They said, we want a king. All the nations have kings. We want a king.

Samuel was prophet at that time and he grieved. He said to God, they are rejecting me. and the Lord said they're not rejecting you, they're rejecting me.

But I'll give them a king. And the first king, Saul, was a total disaster and a little shepherd boy named David was raised up by God to take his place. And under David, we have for the first time and for a very brief time, a united kingdom.

Under David, the 12 tribes, really 13 at this point, their two half-tribes and the tribe of Levi, really become, under David's leadership, a united kingdom. That is approximately 1000 BC. Probably you'd need to date it.

He came to the throne in 1003, as nearly as we can tell. David ruled until 963, and his son Solomon took over. And Solomon began as the wisest ruler that the world had ever known, divinely anointed with the gift of wisdom.

And he ended in total disarray. He had married many, many foreign wives and concubines. And he allowed them to bring with them whatever religious practices they had known previously.

And so the official religion of Israel was still the worship of the Lord God, Yahweh. But in addition to that, the land was completely littered with idolatry and the various practices associated with it. That is the end of the Golden Age, from the beginnings of David to the end of Solomon.

That's the whole time that we have when we think of the nation of Israel. That's all there is. It ended in 922.

If you want to round it off, say 925, you're talking about approximately 75, 80 years is all. That's it. And after Solomon, the nation divided, north and south.

The northern ten tribes took the name of Israel, and the southern two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, Benjamin being a very small tribe, took the name of Judah. And from that point on, we have Israel and Judah more often than not, having problems between each other. So 80 years is all the time that you've got as a united kingdom.

And after that, we've got the history of Israel and we've got the history of Judah, quite separate. Israel continues as a nation until 721 when it is destroyed by the Assyrians. And the Assyrians came in and really raped the land and destroyed most of the inhabitants.

And those who were left, basically, they drove off the land, scattered into exile, into an intermarrying with other peoples and cultures and tribes. And the very small remnant that was left, they then amalgamated with others by bringing others in. That was an Assyrian policy.

Whenever they conquered a people, they would disperse them among the other nations of the Assyrian Empire, and then they would bring in some from the other nations to intermarry with those few who were left. What does that do? Obviously, it breaks down any kind of cultural, racial, religious solidarity that you have had.

It destroys it. It becomes totally eclectic. And the people that came out of that deliberate policy of being transported and intermarrying and infiltrating the culture took the name of the capital of Israel, Not Judah.

Judah still had Jerusalem as its capital. The capital of Israel was Samaria, and they became known as Samaritans. And when you understand all that, you'll understand why we read in the New Testament with some frequency, Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

You understand that? See, they were related way back. But the very thing that God had called his people to stand for, the purity of their relationship with him, was completely obliterated by this deliberate policy of the Assyrians.

So from 721 on, the ten tribes of the north have been known as the ten lost tribes. They were lost into the other nations. And there is a Jewish heritage that has come down in many of the nations of Europe, but it's anything but easily traced.

The folks in Judah, from which we get the name Jew, continued with a history that lasted well beyond that. And the nation of Judah was overrun by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. So there's more than a century, a century and a half almost.

after the fall of Israel, that the Jews, the nation of Judah, continue as a people. And in 586, they too are devastated, and basically those who survive a policy of almost total annihilation are carried off into captivity as slaves into Babylon. The prophets generally, generally, this is a generalization, the prophets basically spoke into the situation that I have just described.

Spoke into that period following the division of the kingdom, basically. Now that, we have to say immediately, there were prophets all the way through. Moses was one of the great prophets.

Joshua was a prophet. Saul, even Saul, when he was anointed king, prophesied. And we have prophets all the way along, but the period, the age of the prophets, is basically the time of the division of the kingdom, the time of Israel and Judah being separate, and the time of the exile and finally coming back after 70 years in Babylon, coming back and beginning again.

The prophetic books of the Old Testament are Isaiah to Malachi, and they warn of Israel and Judah's impending doom. They promise the nation's partial restoration, eventually, and they look forward to the coming of Messiah. I would make those three generalizations.

What are the prophets about? basically, by and large, to categorize them as a group. They're warning of impending judgment.

But they're also saying it won't be final and it won't be complete. There will be a restoration. After God has chastised his people and they have come to repentance, there will be a restoration.

And some of them, much more clearly than others, look way down the corridors of history and see the coming of a new age, the time of Messiah. There's 17 books, 17 prophets, 16 authors. Jeremiah having written also Lamentations.

Some would argue with that. Big controversy, especially about the authorship of Isaiah, whether there was one Isaiah, two or three. But I'll take the conservative view at this point.

They're usually divided into the major prophets and the minor prophets. It's a wonderful story about the Old Testament professor in seminary who every year gave the same final exam, see, and everybody knew what it was going to be, so everybody just studied this one thing. Every year the final exam was, give me a complete list of all of the kings of Israel.

So, I mean, everybody knew. They didn't need to study for that one. They just memorized the list of the kings, and they would just smash that exam.

So this one year, everybody comes in thinking, I got an A on this one. and they sit down and he passes out the exam and it says, please distinguish between the major and the minor profits. And everybody sits there in total panic except for this one student who's writing furiously and comes the end of the time and he hands in his paper.

Everybody else hands in a blank paper and this one student hands in his paper and it says, I would not presume to distinguish between the major and the minor prophets, but it occurred to me you might like a list of the kings of Israel. Major and minor prophets is not a value judgment. This is just a little freebie footnote for you, but major and minor prophets is not a value judgment.

It simply has to do with the length of the book. The major prophets are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. And the minor prophets are the other 12.

Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel are each longer than all 12 of the others combined. Daniel is about as long as the two largest of the minor prophets, Hosea and Zechariah. Having said all that, I would hasten to add that by any standard of measurement whatsoever, Jeremiah is a major prophet.

A major, major prophet. At the close of Solomon's reign, first Israel and then increasingly Judah adopted elements of the very thing they were sent into Canaan to wipe out. They were sent into Canaan not just to enjoy a place of God's blessing for themselves, but also to be his agents of cleansing the land of its abominable practices.

Idolatry, immorality, child sacrifice. They were sent into the land of Canaan to cleanse it of all of those things. And increasingly, first Israel and then Judah adopted to themselves the very things that they were sent in to wipe out.

You can read about golden calves being erected. What does that remind you of? The golden calves.

The very thing that they were sent out of Egypt to get away from. Worship of the calf as a symbol of deity. They erected golden calves in Dan and Bethel.

And the high places, the worship of Baal and the Ashtaroth, the female fertility deities that go with Baal, the male fertility deities. Milcom, Chemosh, and even Malak. To whom firstborn children were offered.

that was inculcated back into the life of God's people. Can you begin to feel what that's like? In fact, right in the city of Jerusalem, the valley of Hinnom, otherwise came to be known as Gehenna, which literally means hell, place of burning, place of garbage, the garbage dump.

You know why it was called that? It was in that valley, right outside the city wall, that they would offer their firstborn children into the arms of a statue of Moloch, which was, in fact, a furnace. A statue which was a furnace, and the children would roll down his arms into his open mouth.

And if you showed any emotion at that sacrifice, it didn't count. You had to do it again next time. This kind of thing.

alongside of, we are God's people. They never, ever totally denied the Lord. Never.

They saw themselves as the people of Yahweh. But it was Yahweh and Baal. Yahweh and the Asherah.

Yahweh and Moloch. And so prophet after prophet is raised up by God to call his people to repentance. Call his people to purity of worship and to do away with all of these terrible, these horrible abominations.

Cult prostitution became part of the worship of these deities, both male and female. Prostitution. Idolatry and wickedness.

The oppression of the poor, rampant immorality, gross abuse of their privileged position by the priests, and then political and military alliances rather than relying on the Lord God to defend them. This was the kind of thing that comes into this period of the divided kingdom. Isaiah's burden was to warn both Israel and Judah of impending doom, and for the most part he was not listened to in the north in Israel, but there was sufficient repentance in Jerusalem to save it, to spare it for a time.

And as I said, Israel falls 721 BC. Now, more than a century later, the situation is growing even more compromised in the south. And it is Jeremiah's burden to witness to that remnant of God's people, primarily just in Jerusalem itself, more broadly in the land of Judah.

Jeremiah's witness falls on deaf ears. He preaches for 40 years, literally without one convert. Maybe we would have to say his secretary believed him.

Baruch believed him, but literally without a convert, this mighty prophet speaks the word of God of incredibly horrific, impending doom. And you see, all around him, there are court prophets and priests who are saying just the opposite. The louder Jeremiah cries out a plea for repentance.

the more they say, no problem. God's never going to let anything happen to Jerusalem. Didn't he put his name there?

Isn't it his city? Isn't the temple there? God is never going to let it.

Now, mind you, there were statues to idols in the temple. So that the very thing that should have been the symbol of purity was so totally compromised that God had to hate it. and yet the false prophets are drowning Jeremiah's word out, and he preaches alone.

Depending how you date it, Isaiah's ministry was somewhere in the period 745 B.C. to 695 B.C. Jeremiah is called to the prophetic office in 626.

Jerusalem is partly destroyed in 606. further devastated in 597, and finally burned and wasted in 586. So 626 to 586 BC are the terrible 40 years of his prophetic ministry.

I should probably mention one more thing. It's interesting. Jeremiah was called to be a prophet during the reign of King Josiah, as we saw in that opening paragraph.

during the 13th year of Josiah's reign. Josiah was a great king, a good king, the last good king of either Israel or Judah. And Josiah was responsible for bringing about a tremendous reformation, but it was on the surface only.

It didn't touch people's hearts. There was a tremendous cleansing, a doing away with the high places and a doing away with the idolatry and the child sacrifice and all the rest of it. But as soon as Josiah died, it came back with a vengeance.

So there was reform on the surface. But even in the midst of reform, God calls Jeremiah, knowing what's about to happen, and gives him this strong message of repentance which nobody heeds. Jeremiah is the classic preacher of doom and destruction, but I need to say to you, he took no pleasure in it.

He's called the weeping prophet. He not only saw what was coming, he lived to see it happen. And he writes the book of Lamentation, which is one of the most sobering things you will ever read in your life, as it does come to pass.

Jeremiah's message, I would summarize it as five-fold. Number one, Jerusalem is going to be destroyed by Babylon. It is going to be destroyed.

And all around him are false prophets saying, peace, peace, when there is no peace. Jerusalem, Judah, the land, the people will be destroyed by Babylon. Secondly, in spite of what I've just said, even now, if you would repent, God will somehow spare you.

Now that seems a contradiction, doesn't it? Look real quickly at Jeremiah 18. I want to show you a key passage to understanding not only that apparent contradiction, but many, many others when we're dealing with predictions in Scripture.

Jeremiah 18, verse 7. The Lord is speaking to him and to the nation. And he says, verse 7, If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation concerning which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will repent of the evil that I intended to do to it.

And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will repent of the good which I had intended to do to it. In other words, many of these things which sound as if they are absolute are in fact conditional. And you can think of Jonah being sent to the city of Nine with a message of total annihilation.

You remember? And yet they repent, and to Jonah's chagrin, God spares the city. And he says, that's the kind of God I am.

I will announce judgment as if there were absolutely no alternative, but if you heed that message and you repent, I'll repent of the evil I was going to do. It also works the other way around. If I announce blessing and you spurn my covenant and ignore my statutes, then in its place there's going to come the very opposite.

Third thing, as it becomes more and more apparent that there will be no repentance, Jeremiah says that if Judah will submit to Babylon, it will be spared somewhat. They can't see that. Babylon is the enemy of God as far as they're concerned.

And now Jeremiah is saying, submit to Babylon. It is the instrument of God to bring his punishment upon you. All the other prophets are saying, that's absurd.

We're God's people. Submit to an alien power. And Jeremiah is saying, yes, submit and you will be spared.

Fourthly, he says, you will recover. In fact, he's very explicit and says in two places, it'll be 70 years. 70 years of exile, and then you'll come back, and God will give a new beginning.

And finally, he says Babylon, herself the destroyer of Judah, will eventually be destroyed, never to rise again. And the book ends with a series of such statements about the way that God will raise up one nation to bring his judgment upon another, and then he'll deal with that nation. the fact that he's using it to be an instrument of punishment or discipline doesn't necessarily mean he's pleased with it.

God is not pleased with Babylon, but he's using it to be his instrument of correction to Judah. And after he's done with that, Babylon will be dealt with, and it never does rise again. And in fact, whatever else you want to say about the Jews, let's get one thing really clear.

After the Babylonian exile, they never, ever again got involved in idolatry. ever to this day. Okay.

Jeremiah lives to see the fulfillment of all of his worst predictions. To see slaughter, rape, pillage, the raising of the temple, the sowing of salt into the agricultural field so that they won't grow anything. Women fighting with their neighbors for the privilege of eating their own babies after birth.

And eating their own children. Cannibalism. It's detailed in the book of Lamentations.

Read it. Starvation. Bondage.

Captivity. Slavery. Exile.

Jeremiah lived to see all of that. and in the midst of all of that in the middle of the book of Lamentations do you know what he said? The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases His mercies are new every morning Great is thy faithfulness, O God That's Jeremiah I'm sorry, this is running a bit longer than I meant to but let me very quickly look at his call with you.

God says from before conception I knew, I consecrated and I appointed you. He says you won't go alone. I will be with you.

Just like Moses, Jeremiah is hesitant to be God's spokesman. God says I'll be with you. I'll put my word in your mouth just like Isaiah the Lord needs to touch Jeremiah's mouth you remember Isaiah says behold I'm a man of unclean lips and he takes a coal from the fire and cleanses his lips and so also he touches Jeremiah's mouth and presumably cleanses it and notice these interesting words he says it three times he says see I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms verse 10 he says To pluck up and to break down.

To destroy and to overthrow. To build and to plant. The negative comes first.

To pluck up, pull out by the roots, break down, to destroy, to overthrow, but that's not the end. I've got to do that negative thing. I've got to do that cleansing thing.

I've got to do that thing of judgment and discipline in order to build again and to plant. And then he gives him a vision. And there are going to be lots of visions in this book.

This is the first one. Jeremiah, what do you see? He says, I see a rod of almond.

And he says, behold, I am watching over my word to perform it. The almond blooms early in the spring. I think there is the implication that what I give you to say will come to pass quickly, just as the almond comes to bloom quickly, but it's also a play on words.

What do you see? A rod of almond, shakay in Hebrew. I am watching shokay over my word.

He gives him a symbol. We're going to see lots of symbols as we get into this book. Jeremiah is called not only to speak his prophecy, but to live it symbolically.

And he gives him another one, another vision. What do you see? The word of the Lord came to me a second time, verse 13, and he said, I see a boiling pot or a boiling cauldron in the north.

That's the Babylonian army. Jeremiah is probably about 20 years old at this point. This is about 20 years before Babylon focuses its attention on Judah.

40 years before its victory is complete. And Jeremiah sees, by divine revelation, what will surely come to pass. And he has the sad, sad burden of speaking it to a people who will not listen and will not heed.

I'd ask you to read, if you can, the next 14 chapters. It's about two chapters a day, isn't it? and we'll pick up there next time.

Let's stand and pray together. Lord God of Israel and Judah and history, as we read of these hard and terrifying things, that in your love and steadfast mercy, you had to bring to your own people. We pray that you will give us eyes to see and ears to hear what it is you desire us to know in this, our generation.

For Jesus' sake. Amen.