So if you would turn with me to Jeremiah chapter 25. Last week we looked at the fact that God was preparing to take the nation of Israel into captivity. There were three invasions from Babylon, the first two, the first invasion from Nebuchadnezzar was one in which they took away some of the young nobility and some of the leaders of Israel but they didn’t do a lot of damage to Jerusalem or the nation itself.
The second invasion, much more damage was done than the third invasion, they totally ransacked and destroyed Jerusalem and the temple. During the first two invasions the temple stood. The people felt because the temple was standing and they looked back in history and saw that God had always delivered them during their time of need when the temple was standing.
He delivered Hezekiah from his enemies. No one had ever conquered and destroyed the temple before and so they felt confident that God was not going to do anything like that. They also had a number of false prophets who were running around saying, well there’s really peace and prosperity, you don’t have to worry.
God’s not going to allow anything to happen to Jerusalem even though some have been taken into captivity, still peace and prosperity are on the way. And they were false prophets bringing a false message that the people would not repent and turn their hearts. The people loved to listen to the false prophets, just like Paul said that in the latter days people would have itching ears where they would want to hear what they wanted to hear instead of the message that the Lord had for them.
Today we live in an age in which you look around and you can see the prophetic hand of God at work in the world today. Prophecies that He foretold about the last days are all around us and happening today. Yet you have many people that are saying God is going to have a great revival, there will be peace and prosperity and judgment is way off yet.
And yet this is the same message that Judah was listening to right before they were taken into captivity. We studied last Wednesday night about the two bowls. There were two bowls of figs.
One was figs that were ripe and good and were pleasant to eat. The other bowl was disgusting to look at, were rotten and no good to eat. You couldn’t eat them.
And God said that these were really the two conditions of the nation of Judah. There were those within the nation that still would turn to the Lord but they were going to have to be taken away into captivity as part of God’s chastisement upon Israel for not doing His will. We’re going to look at that this afternoon, why He did that.
And the second group were those that were going to die by the sword, die by pestilence and suffer great consequence because they had no heart for God, they had no desire to turn to Him. Instead they would believe every false prophet and turn to every lying demon that was behind the gods that they worshipped instead of listening to the true God. So let’s take a look at what was the cause that led to the nation of Israel being taken away by all of Judah, taken away into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar and for what length of time.
We’re going to look at that this afternoon at chapter 25.
The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, that was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. And so Jeremiah is getting this word from the Lord during Jehoiakim’s reign in which Jeremiah, the prophet, spake unto all the people of Judah and to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem saying, from the thirteenth year of Josiah, the son of Ammon, king of Judah, unto this day, that is the three and twentieth year, the word of the Lord hath come unto me and I have spoken unto you, rising early and speaking, but ye have not hearkened.
This has not been a message that Jeremiah hasn’t spoken lightly nor often. He’s spoken it often and it’s been the same message he’s continually brought, but no one’s listening.
And the Lord hath sent unto you all his servants, the prophets, rising early and sending them, but ye have not hearkened nor inclined your ear to hear.
And just pause. Jeremiah was not the only true prophet that God had sent, but there were others that he had sent as well, and they didn’t listen to them either. If it was something that was true, where it was speaking of the judgment of God coming against the nation of Judah and a call to repent or judgment would come, then listen. But every false prophet they listened to.
Let’s just pause here and let’s go to the Lord in prayer.
Lord, I pray that you would just help us to understand the judgment that was coming and you foretold of it. And you told the length of time and you told why. And yet no one would listen.
Lord, help us to realize that your words of prophecy are true. And when you proclaim something is going to happen, it shall happen. And Lord, may we heed your warnings and may we turn and repent from our wickedness and may we seek to walk with you and may we listen to your word.
Lord, help us to learn from Judah and their lack of hearing and their hard-heartedness and stiff-necked attitude. And Lord, help us rather to listen to you as you speak. This we ask in Jesus’ name.
Amen. Jeremiah says, I’m not alone in the message I brought. There’s been other prophets that have brought the same message.
Yet you won’t listen to them and you won’t listen to me. Oftentimes, Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet because as he brought this message, God had given him the vision of what was going to be partaking and happen. And he was being able to be given a vision of the things as they would transpire in the future.
And he wept because he cared. He cared deeply about Judah. He cared deeply about this people, but no one would hear what he had to say.
And so he constantly was weeping because he knew their judgment was coming. Their judgment was not without cause. The cause of their judgment was the fact that they would not listen to God.
God had called them and He had given them a land. He promised the land to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It was a perpetual promise.
Those that would say today that the land of Israel was never given, that God reneged on His promise at this particular point or some other point when the nation of Israel rebelled against Him, they don’t know the word of God, nor do they know the character of God, nor do they know the promises of God. And when God promises something, He means it. And this was a perpetual promise dealing with the land and the people that were the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Not Abraham and Ishmael. Not Abraham, Isaac, and Esau. But Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
And thus the tribe of Jacob became known as Israel because they took the name of their father, whose name was changed from Jacob to Israel, when he was coming back into the land after he had gone to be with his uncle Laban for a number of years because Esau, his brother, had threatened to kill him, said he was going to kill him. And his mother and father sent him to be with Laban. It was there that he married Rachel and her sister Leah, and his sons were born from Leah and Rachel, and then their two nurses or handmaids that became his secondary wives.
And it was to these four women that his twelve sons were born. And these sons, the sons of Israel, because that is the name he took on the way back when he wrestled with the Lord, and the Lord said that he was going to change his name to Israel, which means one who wrestles with God. And he changed his name to Israel, and they took the name Israel, the sons of Israel.
And the sons of Israel become the nation of Israel when they came out of Egypt. They went in as a family, a group of 70 individuals, and they came out as a mighty nation, over a million people. And as they came out, they came out as the people of Israel, the descendants of Israel.
And they went into the promised land, and this was the land that was promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is the land, not all of the land that they have today is what was promised, because there is still more that they are to receive. And that ultimate, all the land will be given to them and realized during the millennial kingdom of Jesus.
It talks about that from the river of Egypt up to the Euphrates River, from the Mediterranean Sea over into the east, which they would take over part of Jordan as well. And it is a lot bigger area than they realize today. The closest it has ever come to them obtaining the whole land was during the reigns of David and Solomon.
And Solomon actually had rule over more land than David. But neither of them had the complete area that God had promised, and one day they shall realize that. The Bible is also very specific about the fact that this land is their land.
And God states it here. He stated it to them again. This land has been given to you.
But there is condition on the land. The land will not be prosperous if you are not living in the land. But the land, if you are taken out of the land, which God is going to do to the nation of Judah, He has already done it to the northern kingdom of Israel, so there is a remnant of the northern kingdom, and the southern kingdom of Judah and Benjamin, of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, all of them, the remnant, are going to be taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar.
But the land is still theirs. And we talked before, the deed has been given to them. That deed has never been changed.
It is just that the land is laying unoccupied. And when they are not occupying it, the land will become barren. And it will literally not produce.
But when they come back into the land, the land produces. And this is the hand of God to show the people, not only of Judah but the rest of the world, that God is God and God can make happen what God says will happen. Well, they are still not believing that they are going to be taken away.
And so we see here that they are called to repentance. Verse 5 of chapter 25. And it says, Then said He, Turn ye again now every one from his evil way, and from the evil way of your doings, and dwell in the land that the Lord hath given unto you, and to your fathers forever and ever.
Now I want you to see the last four words there. How long has He given this land to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and to their descendants? It says, Forever and ever. How long is forever and ever? Forever and ever.
It is not to be someone else’s land. As a matter of fact, the Bible tells us prophetically that in the last days, men will come and try to divide the land. And that those that come and divide the land, judgment shall come against them for dividing the land.
Did you know that the land has tried to be divided under many of the previous U.S. presidents? They tried to make deals where they’d part the land and part of it would be given to the so-called Palestinians, which are really a hodgepodge of various Arabs from different countries, as well as people from other nations that came together. And there is no Palestinian people. There are Arabs that have taken the name Palestinian.
And really that name was given, as we’ve talked before, by the Romans to spite the Jews for rebelling against them because their main enemies had always been the Philistines, which have no relation to the Palestinians. The Philistines were really a seafaring group of people that came from the islands of the Mediterranean and invaded Israel from the west via the Mediterranean Sea and took over what is now the Gaza Strip in that area. And many of the cities that are referred to as being over by the Gaza Strip really were Philistine cities during the times of Samuel and the judges, Ashdod, Gath, Ascalon, and some of the major cities of the Philistines.
Well, those cities’ names haven’t changed. Some of those cities are still located in the same places, but they were never Palestinian cities. They were always part of the promised land given to Israel.
And God says that this land is yours, and it’s yours forever and ever. Under President Carter, President Bush II, Bush I, also during the time of Bill Clinton, there were various deals made to divide the land, and some of them kind of came into fruition. For example, Judea in the west is referred to as the West Bank, but it’s really Samaria and Judea.
If you look at a map of Israel, and I saw a map of Israel today where it shows Israel with what is referred to as Samaria and Judea cut out. It’s like the heart of Israel. It is Samaria and Judea.
It’s what we’re talking about here, it’s that Judea, and it’s Samaria right north of there, where today you have what are referred to as Palestinian communities, where they’re really, they are the ones that are trying to take over the land that has been promised to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As we see that currently, our current President Trump has said that he believes that Judea and Samaria need to be recognized as part of Israel, yet now he is in the process of redoing the Abraham Accords, bringing more people into it, more Arab countries, into an agreement with the Israelis. And part of that is that some of them want something to be done where the Palestinians still have rights to live in those areas.
Whenever they continue to live there, they cause nothing but problems for the Jewish people, and it’s really not their land. And we see that God says that there’s going to be judgment, but that in the last days, that will become a solution to problems, is to divide the land, and they’re continually trying to do it. God says, no, it’s yours forever and ever.
I don’t know what they don’t get from what forever and ever means, and that the Jewish people have had this promise from the Lord, and this entitlement, and this deed forever and ever, ever since the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now we see that he says that it will be yours forever and ever, and go not after other gods and serve them, and that’s what they’re called not to do, and to worship them and provoke them, me not to anger with the works of your hands, and I will do you no harm. And so the Lord says, I won’t judge you if you repent and turn to me.
But the biggest problem is, they don’t have a desire to. Remember who have they been listening to? The false prophets. And the false prophets said, God isn’t mad with you.
There’s going to be peace and prosperity. Oh, just ignore Nebuchadnezzar and the rumblings that are coming from the north. That’s not that serious an issue.
Still got the temple, still got the walls, still have Jerusalem. Why are you worried? God will deliver us again like he always does. No they won’t, because they’re not worshipping God, and the gods that they’re worshipping are demonic entities behind false gods, and they are really worshipping the pagan entities that have been introduced to that region by first the Canaanites and then brought in by those that had inhabited the lands to the north, the Sidonians and those that had inhabited what is today Lebanon and Syria, and to those that had come from the west, the Philistines brought their false gods as well.
All these were introduced, and then on top of that you had later on coming other gods from Europe, the Romans and the Grecians, but they hadn’t come in as of yet because they weren’t there at this time. Now, we see that these things are happening, the nation isn’t going to repent, and God is saying, them judgment’s coming, and go not after other gods. Verse 7, You have not hearkened unto me, saith the Lord, that ye might provoke me to anger with the works of your hands and to your own hurt.
You think that you’re saying I’m not going to worship you because I don’t believe in you, but who are you really harming? I remember in the adult Sunday school class this morning we were talking about the chastisement of God out of Hebrews chapter 12, and in there there’s a verse that says that the Lord chastises those whom he loves, that are his sons. And if you’re not chastised by the Lord, then you are not his son, but a bastard. In other words, he doesn’t care for you.
He loved the people of Israel, but they wouldn’t listen, so the only choice he had was to chastise them. And as we saw on Wednesday night, the chastisement would result in some people’s hearts longing for God and remembering the relationship that they’ve been called into, and other people continually going down a road of rebellion and rejection of the Lord, and their ultimate judgment would be one of destruction. Now, as we see this, he’s saying you’re not listening, and so my judgment’s going to have to come against you, either my chastisement because you’re my child, my son, and I love you, or my judgment because you just absolutely will not respond to my chastisement or discipline, and so you’re really not of mine.
You’re not listening to me. You see no significance in listening to me. Many of the people, especially some of the rulers of Judah at this time, they were leading the people astray.
They were saying we don’t have to listen to God because what he’s saying isn’t true. Well, what had happened is, them listened to God for a long time. At the end of this particular verse, and again in the second portion of this, God tells them how long they’re going to be taken into captivity.
In verse 11, he says, And this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. He gives the time period, seventy years. Seventy years they’re going to be taken into captivity.
He reaffirms that later on in this chapter. The time is seventy years. Why seventy years? Well, this rebellious attitude has gone on for a long time.
God had established and called the nation of Israel, when he established it as a nation, certain things that would show them his power and their love for him. It would show him his ability to be their protector and supplier and the one who would be overseeing them and their trust and obedience in him. One of the things that he called them to do was to have the year of Shabbat.
And the year of Shabbat was to be every seventh year. And every seventh year, they weren’t to plant crops, they weren’t to do the normal things that they did, but they were rather to trust in the Lord that he had given them enough abundance from the previous years to meet all their needs during that seventh year and that what they would do is they let the land rest. It wouldn’t be farmed, it would be at rest that seventh year.
Well, he’s saying seventy years. Seventy years means that seventy years, they didn’t let the land rest when they should have. If you take seven times seven, seventy times seven days of years, you’ve got four hundred and ninety years.
Four hundred and ninety years they had walked in rebellion against God and didn’t honor his seventh year of rest and didn’t do it. They didn’t trust in the Lord. They said, well, look at all we’re going to miss if we don’t farm the land.
We won’t have this crop that we can bring in. Why should we trust God? Why should we do what he says? Well, God says, okay, then I’m going to allow the land to rest and I’ll cause the land to rest. And so it’s going to be a seventy year period.
You wouldn’t do it, but now I’m going to do it for you. He says the land is going to be desolate. What does desolate mean? It means that there’s not going to be anything growing on it.
Not going to be anything there. And it won’t be until you come back into the land. And then miraculously, because my hand will be upon you, all of a sudden things will grow.
The olive trees will come back. The vineyards will come back. The crops will come back.
The animals that you are raising will come back because my hand will be upon you. God also redoes this when he chastises the nation of Israel and scatters them amongst the nations, which he said he was going to do again. And that happened during the Roman Empire around the year 70 A.D. The people had, it’s about 40 years after Jesus had been crucified and risen from the dead.
The Israelites or the Israelis, the Israelites rather, the people of Israel were believing some of their rabbis that they should rise up in rebellion. They had false leaders that said let’s rise up in rebellion. And so these men caused Israel to rise up against rebellion against Rome.
And the Rome had always viewed Israel as a troublesome nation. And so they sent Titus in and Titus leveled Jerusalem, leveled the temple that was the second temple and was enhanced by Herod the Great. When he ruled, it was made more beautiful and some things were added onto it.
They destroyed it and leveled it. And so they had no more temple. They had no more place of worship.
The Temple Mount was barren. The whole city of Jerusalem was destroyed. You go to Jerusalem today and they’ll take you on the tour of the places that Jesus supposedly stopped when he was carrying his cross from where he was tried up to Mount Calvary.
The only problem is the road that he traveled on would have been about, I don’t know, 10 feet or more underneath where you’re walking. And so when they say, oh, here’s where he stopped. Touch the wall here and you’re touched.
No, you’re not because it’s down below. The city has been built upon, built upon, built upon since the time of Christ. And it was totally leveled after Jesus walked there.
And so the roads you’re walking on today, and there are some places where they’ve excavated and gone down. And there is one place where you can go down and actually see part of the road where Jesus, the Roman soldiers were playing a game on the street. And it has the markings that they’d marked out for the game they were playing that would have been done during the time of Jesus.
But guess what? You’re down a number of feet where they’ve excavated this out and you can see that. So men have made all kinds of things that are just idols and icons and places that are worshipped that have nothing to do with reality of what happened. And the people didn’t believe that this was going to happen.
It happened then and it happened again in 70 AD. When it happened in 70 AD and they wiped out the city of Jerusalem, God said, well, I’m going to bring the people back again. And when I’ve scattered them to the nations, the land is going to be desolate again, just like he said it would do during the time when he scattered them or had them taken away to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar.
He said the land would be desolate till they came back. He said the land will be desolate till my people come back. And they came back in 1948.
They came back as a nation. They came back as Israel, the combined nation of Judah and Israel. They came back as one.
God said that two sticks would go away as two sticks. They’d come back as one. They went away as Israel and then they went away as Judah, but they came back as Israel.
Today is Israel. And I was just listening to a man today, Governor Huckabee, who is now our ambassador to Israel. He was talking about the significance of Israel and how there’s a whole bunch of people today in the United States that say we don’t need Israel and they’re speaking out against Israel.
And he says we don’t understand. We get all kinds of things from Israel. The cell phones that you have, you wouldn’t have a cell phone if it wasn’t for Israel.
You wouldn’t have many of the modern technology that you have if it wasn’t for Israel. They have invented a lot of the things. It’s just that they didn’t have the market to market them because they only have a few million people.