God has given Jeremiah and told him to use various examples of objects that are to explain God’s relationship with Israel and Israel’s lack of a relationship with God. Last Wednesday, we looked at the fact that God is the sovereign potter. He told Jeremiah to go down and look at a potter and observe the potter and what the potter did with the clay and how the potter could mold the clay and take a lump that was unseemly and he could take and start over and mold that into a very useful and beautiful thing.
And God desired to do that with Israel. He desires it to do with all those that are in rebellion to Him, to remold them into the man or woman that He wants them to be and to do that which He desires for them to do. Today’s lesson, a lot of chapter 19, is even more sobering because God wants Jeremiah to take a piece of pottery, a jar, that is defective, but pottery, as we saw in last Wednesday night’s lesson, when the clay is soft and before you put it in the kiln and heated it to harden the clay, you can still remold it.
They’ve got little videos you can look at on YouTube on how to do pottery and you can see them take a lump of clay and they put it on the spinning wheel and they just take their hands and they do it certain ways and it goes way up and it comes way down and it goes out and they can do all kinds of interesting things with it. But the only time you can do that is when it’s pliable and it’s before it’s been hardened by the kiln. Jeremiah is told by the Lord, there’s a jar and I want you to take this jar because this jar is hardened.
It can’t be changed. And I want you to take this jar and smash it against the rock and see what happens. And the jar just shatters.
And that’s the example that we’re going to begin to look at in today’s lesson of chapter 19. Israel had hardened herself so much, she didn’t want to respond to God. She had no desire to follow God.
She wanted to follow the false gods. And God was going to bring judgment against her and she even denied that the judgment was coming. Even though Jeremiah kept saying, yes it is, yes it is, and they kept saying, no it’s not, no it’s not.
And the false prophets would be there and they’d go, oh don’t listen to him. We’re going to have peace and prosperity. God is with us.
And remember the temple at this time is still standing and so they think, well God is with us because the temple is standing. And one day the temple would fall and they’d realize to their horror that God’s word had been true and they should have attended in shame and they had not. Let’s read in Jeremiah Chapter 19.
Thus saith the Lord, Go and get a potter’s earthen bottle, and take of the ancients of the people, and of the ancients of the priests;
2 And go forth unto the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the east gate, and proclaim there the words that I shall tell thee, Jeremiah 19:1-2
12 Thus will I do unto this place, saith the Lord, and to the inhabitants thereof, and even make this city as Tophet:
Jeremiah 19:12
Now the ancients would have been those that were elderly, the ones that should have known better, and the ones that had probably lived during the time of Josiah and had memories of the time of Hezekiah and were aware of when there had been repentance in the land, when there had been revival amongst some of the people, but they had now rejected all of that. And he says, and go forth unto the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the east gate, and proclaim there the words that I shall tell thee.
Now the valley of Hinnom is an interesting place. The valley is actually towards the south side of the city of Jerusalem and it is a valley where, I don’t know if they still do, I don’t remember them saying they did when they were there, but at the time that Jesus lived they threw the garbage in this valley and they would constantly burn it and because that was the main place they’d throw the garbage, the fires never went out. And so Jesus referred to this valley as a place that represented Gehenna or hell and that the fire would never go out and judgment would be there.
Well, the history of this valley is very interesting as well because during the time of Manasseh and Ammon, kings of Judah, they set up idols to Moloch in this valley. And that is where they took their children and sacrificed them to the god of Moloch and they would do it by burning them alive. Just a horrible, horrible thing.
And you can see a digression from Baal to Ashtaroth to Moloch. Baal is worshiping a different god, Ashtaroth brings in all the sexual perversion and Moloch destroys the value of human life. And the people had gone down this whole path of Baal, Ashtaroth, and now they’re at the stage of Moloch.
And this is what had been done in the Valley of Hinnom. And even though the people weren’t openly worshiping Moloch at this particular time, they had once again returned to all the false gods. And the Lord is saying, go down, take that jar and go to the Valley of Hinnom.
What’s it going to do with it there if I take it there? And say, Hear ye the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, the witch, whosoever heareth his ears shall tingle, because they have forsaken me and have estranged this place and have buried incense in it unto other gods whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocence. And so this is the place that all of this occurred.
They set up places of worship there and then the worship just, as Paul talks about, once you reject the evidence of God, you only spiral downward into this vortex of more and more evil and wickedness until finally it’s unbelievable. And in Romans chapter 1 it talks about the people initially reject God as creator, they reject God as the one who is worthy of our praise, and when they do that, it ultimately ended up, as Paul says, in sexual perversion, and from sexual perversion comes death. And that’s exactly what we see happening here in Israel.
And this became the place that they honored, but became a place of judgment for the Lord. And so he’s saying, go down there and I’m going to show you something in this valley. They have built also the high place of Baal to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind.
God says, I didn’t even think of something this wicked or evil. I did not command it to be done, and yet they do it. And they’re doing it in the honor of demonic gods that they don’t even know.
That’s the amazing thing. God tells Jeremiah, they don’t even know these gods. They think that Baal is the god.
Baal isn’t the god. Satan is the god behind Baal. You can go and you can read in Ezekiel, also in the book of Isaiah, and it’s talking there about the king of Tyre in Ezekiel.
And God is bringing all His judgments against the various kingdoms around Israel. And Ezekiel is speaking judgments that are going to come on these. And he comes to Tyre.
He talks about the king of Tyre. And initially it sounds like he’s talking about a man. But all of a sudden he talks about the king of Tyre that he was the most beautiful of all the cherubs.
And it can only be describing Satan and how he had this position of authority and power that God had given him until pride was found in him and that he would be cast down and be judged. And so they don’t understand it, nor do they want to understand the demonic forces that are behind the gods that they worship. When the true and the living God has revealed Himself to them on more than one occasion.
Revealed Himself to them during the time of Josiah. Revealed Himself to them during the time of Hezekiah. Revealed Himself to them during the time of Jehoshaphat.
Revealed Himself to them throughout the life of David and the miracles that David had happened in his life and all that David did to worship the Lord. Had revealed Himself to them during the times of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And the sons of Jacob.
When their descendants were delivered from Egypt. He had revealed Himself and made Himself known to them on numerous occasions. Yet they say, we don’t know you, but we know these gods when they don’t know these gods at all.
And they don’t know where they’re leading them. And they don’t want to understand. Instead, they want to go blindly to their own destruction.
And that is where people are today. People today, oftentimes, they don’t want to know. You bring up a lesson in dealing with, for example, what’s in Hollywood today or music today and what’s behind the music scene and the Hollywood scene.
What’s behind many of the things that are being done in our nation and around the world today. People don’t want to hear. They don’t want to listen to it.
They’d rather just listen to their music, and not pay any attention even to the words and what they’re saying. They don’t want to listen to the gods. They don’t want to know them.
But yet, that’s what they want to worship. And those are the ones they want to worship. And you come and present them the truth of God.
God is a merciful, loving, true God. One who does not lie. One who does not go back on His Word.
He is totally faithful. And He’s just and true. And they don’t want to hear it.
And that was Israel. And so, He’s saying, go here. And this is these people.
Because they built also the high places of Baal. In verse 6, Therefore behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that this place shall no more be called Tophet, nor the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.
It’s going to be the Valley of Judgment.And that’s what He’s saying. It’s going to be the Valley of Judgment. The Valley of Slaughter. Because these other names are referring to what happened here in the worship of the gods. This is going to be happening with the judgment of God coming upon the people of God because of their lack of desire to bow to the true and living God. And I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place, and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hands of them that seek their lives and their carcasses will I give to be meat of the fowls of the heaven and for the beasts of the earth.
And I will make this city desolate, and the hissing every one that passeth by thereby shall be astonished and hiss because of all the plagues thereof. This has happened more than once in the history of Israel, this judgment. It happened here when they were taken away into Babylonian captivity.
Literally the land did become desolate until they came back and rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, rebuilt the city of Jerusalem, and rebuilt the temple. And we’re studying that in Nehemiah. Although it never reached the glory that it had during the time of Solomon nor during the time of David.
And then, again, the people neglected the Lord and rejected the Lord and began to be influenced. Various other empires came in and their leaders influenced them. During the time of Antipas Epiphanes, he was one of the leaders that had worked under Alexander the Great who was given that particular portion of the world to be ruler over.
And his background was Hellenistic Greek mythology, and that’s what he worshipped were the Greek gods. And really he worshipped himself because he declared himself to be black. And he wanted to influence Israel on Hellenistic thought or Greek thought and that they would become consumed with the Greek philosophy and Greek gods and quit worshipping this god of the Bible.
And he did everything he could. And he had a fairly strong influence in that he began to influence the people. And then there was a revolt that rose up and it became the Maccabean Revolt.
And that resulted after he declared himself god in the temple of God and sacrificed the pagan, the alpha of God. And then the Maccabees rose up in rebellion and it became known as Hanukkah. The standard thing that the Jews say is whenever anybody does anything really bad against us, we come back and then we end up getting a holiday out of it.
But it became the celebration of lights or Hanukkah. That was the celebration that they were celebrating when Jesus came to Jerusalem one time. And he stood, and that’s the time, he was in Jerusalem during the Hanukkah period, that he stood before Jerusalem and yelled out, Behold, I am the light of the world.
And he was proclaiming, it’s not the candles that you are to follow, but it’s me. I am the light of the world. They are just a symbol.
The Hanukkah candle stand or the menorah is merely a symbol of my light. It’s so that you could understand that only light penetrates the darkness. Only light can remove the darkness.
And I am the light of the world. I’ve come to take away the impact of darkness in your life. Well, what had happened is that during that time that Jesus was there, they had been influenced and they, for the most part, were looking for a kingdom on earth to overthrow the Romans.
And they kept trying to do it until finally the Romans, under Tiberius, destroyed Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and then a few years later just scattered the people throughout all the nations of the world. And just like during the time that Jeremiah prophesied and the people were taken away into Babylon and the nation became desolate, the land became desolate. Likewise, when Israel was out of the land, after that came a couple hundred years later came the Ottoman Empire, and the land was just desolate.
And Mark Twain, as I mentioned before, went to that land in the mid-1860s and toured the land of Israel and said, what a desolate, forbearing country. All it is is swamps, deserts, rocks, and there’s no people. And who would even want to live here? And basically saying, this is supposed to be the promised land, but look at it.
It’s totally desolate. Today Israel isn’t desolate unless the people are back in the land. But you see that one of the things that God is trying to get the people to do when He removes it from the land, makes it desolate, is to show them, I’m God, I’m the one.
It’s not your gods. Your gods only result in all of this desolation coming. They can’t do anything for you.
But I can bring the land back to life when I bring you back to the land. I’m the one that can fulfill my promises. Well, what was happening is, once again, they were not listening to God but worshipping false gods and didn’t even realize who they were worshipping.
Verse 9, And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege and the straightness hereof their enemies, and know that they seek their lives and shall straighten them. This actually happened. They were brought under siege.
And you can read about this happening in 2 Kings 6, verses 28 and 29. They were brought under siege. They had no food. And they were literally eating their own children. And none of it had to happen. It didn’t have to happen.
But they willfully chose the direction that made it go. It’s just like America did not have to go down a road of rebellion against God, but they willfully chose to go that way. And God calls us, but if we don’t respond to His call, He allows us to have the desires of our heart.
And Jeremiah said, the heart is deceitful. Remember he said, You people, you follow your hearts. You don’t follow me.
And you don’t follow my word. But you listen to your hearts. And he said, Your hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked.
What man can know them? And the thing is, none of us can. Only God knows the heart. And he says, Then shalt thou break that bottle in the sight of the men that go with you.
After he tells them all of this that’s going to happen, then he has to take that bottle. And they’re in this valley, this valley of Hinnomen. And he’s got this clay bottle.
Now, the clay bottle, when it’s hardened, it becomes like glass. And it will break when it hits rocks. But when it’s soft and pliable, you can still mold it and change it.
What God is saying, You have become so hard. You’re like this clay bottle. You’re not moldable anymore.
You won’t respond to me anymore. You won’t listen to me anymore. And so Jeremiah is going to show you what’s going to happen.
And he takes the clay bottle and he throws it. It hits the rocks and it shatters. He said, That is your future.
That’s what’s going to happen to you because you’ve rebelled against it. Your lives are going to be destroyed. This clay bottle that one time had a use, has no use anymore.
It’s shattered and destroyed. What a sobering, sobering lesson that Jeremiah is to bring to these people. And shalt thou say unto them, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter’s vessel that cannot be made whole again.
And they shall bury them in Tophet. And that is in the Valley of Hinnonin. Till there be no place to bury.
In other words, there’s going to be so many dead people that are going to start burying them out here in the garbage dump. And there’s going to be so many of them that you can’t even bury them anymore. There’s no place left to bury them.
That is the judgment that’s coming. And he’s saying it’s because you take this clay bottle and you cast it against a rock and you throw it and it shatters. How do you put it back together again? The old nursery rhyme, Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall.
Humpty Dumpty took a great fall. All the king’s soldiers, all the king’s men tried to put Humpty together again. And I asked my granddaughter, Who’s Humpty Dumpty? She said, he’s an egg.
Don’t you know he was an egg? And eggs, when they’re all broken, you can’t put them back together again. Clay bottles, when they’re all broken, it’s impossible to put them back together again unless it’s a miracle of God. God would put the people of Israel back together again.
It would be on His terms and His time. Not now because of the rebelliousness of their hearts. They’ve hardened their hearts.
They’re like the clay bottle. The judgment’s coming. Thus will I do unto this place, saith the Lord, and to the inhabitants thereof, even make this city.
That’s Topheth. In other words, Jerusalem’s going to become like this valley of judgment. This valley that was good for nothing but a garbage dump where fires went all the time because of what had been done there.
He said, I’m going to make the whole city like that. And that’s exactly what happened under Nebuchadnezzar. The whole city was destroyed and burned.
And it was brought down. The walls were tore down. The temple tore down.
The houses tore down. And the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah shall be defiled as the place of Topheth. In other words, they’re going to become like this valley.
Because of all the houses upon whose roofs they have burned incense unto the host of heaven and have poured out drink offerings unto other gods. They went into their houses and they didn’t want to worship God but instead they went up on their roofs, looked up to the stars and worshipped the stars of heaven. Do you think that we do that in America? It’s not so prevalent today that you see on a daily basis because you don’t have newspapers anymore.
You have to go online to find the stuff. But we used to get a newspaper. The Forum used to print the newspaper and it would come out daily.
And every day they’d have in there a horoscope. What was a horoscope? A horoscope is a demonic device that is supposed to tell you the future and what your future is going to be. Well, we’re not supposed to rely upon demonic spirits.
We’re not supposed to rely on naysayers and we’re not supposed to rely on dead people to give us direction for the future. We’re not supposed to rely on the stars. The stars can’t tell us what’s going to happen, but God can.
And we should call upon the name of the Lord which will look to His Word and we should realize that He is the truth. But the nation of Israel, instead of listening to God when He sent Jeremiah and other prophets to tell them, what they do is they go up on the roof and they look at the stars and they do astrology, not astronomy. Astronomy is studying the stars and learning about God’s creation.
Astrology is taking the stars and have them try and tell you what your future is going to be. It’s another way of, like for example, reading tea leaves. People will drink tea and they have tea leaves and the tea leaves will come out and they’ll have somebody come in and read the tea leaves for them to tell the future.
Or it’s like having somebody that’s into the occult and have them read the palm of your hand and they’ll tell you your future on the palm of your hand. All of that is lies from the pit of hell and guess what? The demons of hell get it right sometimes because they have lived ever since they were created and they have seen things. For example, somebody said, well, you know, I was speaking to my dead relative and they would be able to tell me things that only my dead relative would have known.
Well, Satan could have been there to see what was happening. Satan was there during World War II. Satan was there during the American Revolution.
Satan was there when our ancestors came across the ocean to America. Satan was there during all of that time. He can recall things that have happened.
He can’t tell the future because he’s not omniscient. But he and his demons have an understanding of the past. And they can deceive people by telling them things that make them think that they’re omniscient.
But they’re not. And so we see that these people were going to the stars and looking to the stars for advice and for direction to the future instead of believing the words of God that came to him through Jeremiah and through other prophets that lived at the time of Jeremiah that God had sent to them. They wouldn’t listen to the true prophets.
Instead, they listened to the false prophets and turned to astrology and other demonic ways of interpreting the future that is not the future. Then came Jeremiah from Topheth whither the Lord had sent him to prophesy. And he stood in the court of the Lord’s house and said to all the people, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I will bring upon this city and upon all their towns all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they have hardened their necks that they might not hear My words.
They have become like that clay jar hard that cannot be pliable in My hands and are good for nothing except to be broken against the rocks of judgment. And it’s coming. In America, we need to be humbled.
And we need to repent. And we need to look to God. And not to the God of our making, but to the God of the Scriptures.
And we need to look to His Word and allow His Word to direct our paths and not pick and choose what we’re going to believe and what we’re going to follow and what we’re not going to follow. You know, there’s a whole bunch of people in our country today that they want to pick out blessings here and blessings there, don’t want to listen to judgment here and judgment there. They want to make and mold and shape God into the God they want instead of the God who is.
So may we follow the true and the living God. Let’s just close in prayer. Lord, I pray that You would help us to understand these truths, help us to apply these truths to our lives, and may we seek to be used by You.
And Father, may we listen and learn from the error of Judah during the time of Jeremiah. This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
3 And say, Hear ye the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem; Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, the which whosoever heareth, his ears shall tingle.
4 Because they have forsaken me, and have estranged this place, and have burned incense in it unto other gods, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents;
5 They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind:
6 Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that this place shall no more be called Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of slaughter.
7 And I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place; and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hands of them that seek their lives: and their carcases will I give to be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth.
8 And I will make this city desolate, and an hissing; every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished and hiss because of all the plagues thereof.
9 And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives, shall straiten them.
10 Then shalt thou break the bottle in the sight of the men that go with thee,
11 And shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter’s vessel, that cannot be made whole again: and they shall bury them in Tophet, till there be no place to bury.
12 Thus will I do unto this place, saith the Lord, and to the inhabitants thereof, and even make this city as Tophet:
13 And the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah, shall be defiled as the place of Tophet, because of all the houses upon whose roofs they have burned incense unto all the host of heaven, and have poured out drink offerings unto other gods.
14 Then came Jeremiah from Tophet, whither the Lord had sent him to prophesy; and he stood in the court of the Lord’s house; and said to all the people,
15 Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring upon this city and upon all her towns all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they have hardened their necks, that they might not hear my words.