Jeremiah 29:15-32. \u00a0In today\u2019s reading we start off with the rest the letter that Jeremiah sent to the exiles in Babylon.\u00a0 We started reading what God had to say to them yesterday.\u00a0 If you haven\u2019t read that post you should go back and read it first.\u00a0 Yesterday\u2019s reading ended with God telling the exiles that, if they really truly wanted him back in their lives that he would be there for them.\u00a0 We already have seen that their exile was part of his plan.\u00a0 God is always active in our world and affecting the lives we live, but if we want to have a serious personal relationship with him we need to be \u201call in\u201d with him. \u00a0God also confirmed that he had not forgotten all of his promises to the Jewish people about their future and their land.\u00a0 But for a while the people in exile needed to accept it as part of God\u2019s plan and settle down where they were.\u00a0 The needed to be close to him not necessarily close to Jerusalem.<\/p>\n
In verse 15 God moves to the issue of the \u201cprophets\u201d that were with the exiles.\u00a0 Remember the false prophets back in Jerusalem were challenging Jeremiah\u2019s messages.\u00a0 They were so wrapped up in the \u201cwhere\u201d, Jerusalem and the Temple\u201d, that they couldn\u2019t even hear God and were confusing their own word, idea, and dreams with words from God.\u00a0 The \u201cprophets\u201d in Babylon were in the same boat; it was all about getting back to Jerusalem and the Temple (Jeremiah 29:8-10).\u00a0 In verse 16 God brings up the people back home; the \u201clucky\u201d ones, and says, \u201cLet me tell you about these guys\u2026\u201d.\u00a0 In verses 17-19 we find out that the people back in Jerusalem were going to suffer further invasions.\u00a0 Along with the invasions would come famine, death, and disease.\u00a0 Eventually the people back in Jerusalem would leave Judah and wind up elsewhere.\u00a0 We know from later in the book of Jeremiah (and from history) that a lot of them ran away to Egypt.<\/p>\n
It is interesting that God uses the plural for where they are scattered (\u201cnations\u201d), from what we know the people in Judah basically all went to Egypt, one nation.\u00a0 It is of course possible that a few went elsewhere and that is why it says \u201cnations\u201d in verse 18, but this could also be a case where Jeremiah is talking about his day but the prediction also applies to the future.\u00a0 Back in verse 14 when God is telling the exiles that he will one day take them back to Jerusalem he also says \u201cnations\u201d even though they were all together in Babylon (and basically stayed that way for the whole 70 years).\u00a0\u00a0 At the end of the 70 years a new king conquered the Babylonian Empire and allowed the Jewish people to return to Jerusalem and Judea.\u00a0 So God\u2019s promise was fulfilled to the people of Jeremiah\u2019s day.\u00a0 We know from history, though, that that didn\u2019t last forever.\u00a0 Judah was ruled by three more nations between then and the time of Jesus.\u00a0 In 70 AD Jerusalem and the new Temple (we\u2019ll get to that) were destroyed by the Roman army.\u00a0 At that time the Jewish people were scattered and wound up all over the world.\u00a0 \u00a0In the last 100 or so years they have been returning to the land.\u00a0 Many believe that this return is setting the stage for the final and ultimate fulfillment of the promise of a forever kingdom with a descendant of David on the throne.\u00a0 God may have been hinting at this by using plural nouns in this passage.<\/p>\n
In verses 15-16 we learned that what was going to happen in Jerusalem was supposed to be a lesson to the exiles.\u00a0 We also see that idea in verse 17 when Jeremiah brings up the rotten fig idea again.\u00a0 Remember in Jeremiah 24 the two baskets of figs.\u00a0 The exiles were the good figs and the people left home the bad figs.\u00a0 The idea was that the exiles were the ones where God wanted them and the people left behind were the ones who were not really where God wanted them.\u00a0\u00a0 In verse 18 we learn that the whole world was also going to learn from the people in Judah.\u00a0 The people left behind would become a sort of warning about the power and purity or jealousness of Yahweh.\u00a0 In verse 19 we see that what happened to the people left behind was directly related to their disobedience to God.<\/p>\n
The end of verse 19 and verse 20 have two interesting facts in them.\u00a0 First we are reminded that the people had been warned over and over again.\u00a0 God works hard to keep us out of trouble but we always seem to find it when we are controlling our own lives.\u00a0 The second thing we don\u2019t want to miss is the very last part of verse 19, \u201cbut you did not listen\u201d.\u00a0 God brings the message full circle to the exile who are reading this letter.\u00a0 Remember, back in verse 15, when God brought up the people left behind that he was doing it because the people in exile were sort of envious and wanting to return right away, even though God decided they needed to be in Babylon for 70 years.\u00a0 Here in vv. 19-20 he reminds them that the people left behind are not where he wants them and they will suffer for that, so the exiles better listen and learn.<\/p>\n
Back in Jerusalem, Jeremiah was being challenged by false prophets, in chapter 28 we saw what happened to one of them in particular, Hananiah.\u00a0 He made some very specific predictions that contradicted what God had told Jeremiah.\u00a0 God made an example out of him by predicting his death within a year and them following through 2 months later.\u00a0 In verse 21-23 we have a similar story about two false prophets in Babylon.\u00a0 Not only were they saying that the captivity would end quickly they were disobedient in other ways as well.\u00a0 God chose to use them as an example and predicted that Nebuchadnezzar would execute them.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have any confirmation that they were, but the track record of Jeremiah and the other true prophets in the Old Testament makes me certain that they were.\u00a0 I like the end of verse 23 when Yahweh says, \u201cI am the one who sees and knows, I am the witness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verse 24 shifts to another letter Jeremiah is to send, this one to another false prophet in Babylon, Shemaiah.\u00a0 In verse 25 God starts the letter by identifying himself as Yahweh (LORD, the one true God).\u00a0 Through Jeremiah, God is responding to a letter that Shemaiah had sent to one of the leading priests back in Jerusalem; a letter he was to share with the other priests and the people back home.\u00a0 We also learn from verse 25 that the letter contained Shemaiah\u2019s own personal words.\u00a0 That is a contrast to the fact that the \u201cword of Yahweh came to Jeremiah\u201d.<\/p>\n
In verse 26-28 we learn what the letter from Shemaiah said.\u00a0 \u00a0In the letter he tells Zephaniah (not<\/span> the Zephaniah who is one of the minor prophets) the leading priest that Yahweh has put him in charge there in Jerusalem and that part of his job is to chain up any wild and crazy prophets that are there.\u00a0 In verse 27 Shemaiah wants to know why Zephaniah hasn\u2019t locked up Jeremiah.\u00a0 In verse 28 he lists his complaint against Jeremiah.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t like it that Jeremiah had sent a letter to the exiles telling them to settle down and that Yahweh was going to keep them in Babylon a long time.\u00a0 In verse 29 we see that Zephaniah showed the letter to Jeremiah.\u00a0 Zephaniah was probably a faithful priest because he didn\u2019t lock Jeremiah up like the letter asked.<\/p>\n In verses 30-32 we see Jeremiah\u2019s response to the letter from Shemaiah.\u00a0 Actually it\u2019s God\u2019s response since we are told \u201cthe word of Yahweh came to Jeremiah\u201d, again the contrast with the source of Shemaiah\u2019s message.\u00a0 You want to notice that Jeremiah (or really God) didn\u2019t answer Shemaiah he sent a letter back to the people in exile.\u00a0 In that letter God makes it very clear that Shemaiah wasn\u2019t speaking for him and also that Shemaiah\u2019s message was a lie.\u00a0 Yomight want to notice that the people were believing Shemaiah\u2019s lies, too.\u00a0 In verse 32 God informs the people that Shemaiah will die because of misleading the people and even worse his family line will end with him.\u00a0 God also makes it clear that contradicting what he has said is considered rebellion.\u00a0 One bright point in the whole response to the exiles is that God is planning to do some good for the Jewish people.\u00a0 This promise, at least in the near future, would be for the exiles in Babylon.\u00a0 Remember from yesterday that the Jewish people who had remained in Jerusalem would eventually be scattered among \u201cnations\u201d.\u00a0 \u00a0We see that it will be soon since God says he is about to do this good thing and that it would be something that Shemaiah would miss out on.\u00a0 When the Jewish people returned at the end of the 70 years of captivity there were some alive who had lived in Jerusalem before the captivity and remembered the old Temple.<\/p>\n I think it is important to notice that false prophets, wherever they are, are subject to God\u2019s discipline.\u00a0 Hananiah in Jerusalem and Ahab, Zedekiah, and Shemaiah in Babylon all suffered death because contradicted God and were misleading the people.\u00a0 God loves people and he wants our relationship with him fixed, he has been working out the details of that for thousands of years now.\u00a0 But people will perish for eternity, because they reject Jesus, God\u2019s \u201cfix\u201d.\u00a0 In this story we see that God is very serious about his message getting to the people.\u00a0 It is also important to note that the first three guys all died because they were saying that God told them something that he didn\u2019t, but the last guy died for using his own ideas to contradict God.\u00a0 We need to be careful about contradicting God , ever.<\/p>\n God help my words be true to you and your plan.\u00a0 Help them be words that bring spiritual renewal; eternal life; a forever relationship with you into peoples lives.\u00a0 Let me be a true and faithful spokesperson for you. Thank you for a hope and a future.\u00a0 Let me help other have the same. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jeremiah 29:15-32. \u00a0In today\u2019s reading we start off with the rest the letter that Jeremiah sent to the exiles in Babylon.\u00a0 We started reading what God had to say to them yesterday.\u00a0 If you haven\u2019t read that post you should go back and read it first.\u00a0 Yesterday\u2019s reading ended with God telling the exiles that, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1774"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1775,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1774\/revisions\/1775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}