Jeremiah had brought prophecies against the southern kingdom of Judah for their rebellion against God. And if you remember, the Lord had told Jeremiah when he called him, I’m going to place words upon your lips to share, but people won’t listen. And what a calling to tell the Lord to tell you that. And that’s exactly what the nation of Judah did. They didn’t listen. But God wanted them to know he’s not done with them yet. And he told them that they would be returned again to the land after a 70-year period.
And they in fact did come, those of you who were with us when we were studying Nehemiah. They came back during the time of Nehemiah and Esther, 70 years after they were taken into captivity. Those of you who were on Sunday mornings and were studying Daniel.
Daniel was part of that group, the first group that was taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar. He was a young boy at the time. Daniel would have known Josiah, who was the last godly king of Judah, and who Jeremiah ministered to.
But it was Josiah’s sons that turned against God and led the people and opened the floodgate back up for idolatry and rebellion against God, which ultimately resulted in Nebuchadnezzar being used as God’s tool of judgment against Judah to take them into captivity. At the same time as this, as I was mentioning to someone before the service, what’s happening in the Middle East now is nothing new. A lot of the same nations and same people are still against Israel, that were against Israel back at the time of Jeremiah.
At that time, as we studied last Wednesday night, the Philistines were one of the people that was always against Israel. And if you’re familiar with some of the towns of the Philistines, Gaza, Ashdod. Ashdod and these cities, some of these cities are still there. The Gaza Strip is still there. Gaza City is still there. The Philistines are not the ones that are inhabiting Gaza today.
Today it is a mixture of Arabs and other nationalities that have come in, and they’ve been called the Palestinians, but there is no such group of people as the Palestinians. But they inhabit the Gaza Strip and they are thrown in the side of Israel. Also at the same time, there were two nations that were relatives, Amnon and the Moabites. Moab and Amnon were brothers. They were sons of Lot through his daughters, through an incestuous relationship with his daughters. And their descendants became these two nations. They were relatives, if you would, of Israel.
The sons of Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, they were the great-grandchildren of Abraham. The sons of Lot, they would have been the great-nephews of Abraham. And so we see that there’s relationships there, but yet the Moabites and the Ammonites always seem to be a thorn in the side of Israel, and Moab especially at this particular time.
And if you remember, the Moabites were always attacking Israel when Israel was coming out of Egypt. I was going to put up the map and I should have. Moab, if you go to the Middle East today and you took the nation of Jordan and you divided it into three parts, the northern part, the central part, and the southern part, and then you carved out a little indentation towards the north.
That indentation would be the eastern side of the Jordan River where the Golan Heights were, and that was the land that was given to two-and-a-half tribes of Israel. The northern part would have been the part that was the Ammonites. The central part would have been the Moabites, and the southern part would have been the Edomites.
The Edomites were also cousins, if you would, of the nation of Israel because Esau was the brother of Jacob, and it’s his descendants that started the nation of Edom. These three nations, Edom, Moab, and Ammon, even though they’re relatives of the Israelites, did everything they could to prevent Israel from getting into the Promised Land. The Moabites, if you remember, the king of the Moabite nation, hired Balaam, a false prophet, to put curses on Israel when they were coming into the land.
Every time that Balaam would try to curse Israel, he would have to bless them. When he couldn’t curse them, the king of Moab became very angry because he paid him a bunch of money to curse Israel, and he couldn’t curse him. What Balaam told the king of Moab was, the way that you can get God to judge Israel is have your daughters marry their sons, and your sons marry their daughters, and then have the offspring of those relationships worship your gods.
That will cause the God of Israel to become angry with Israel because he told them not to do that. Because of that, God had said that the Moabites were never to marry the Israelites. However, there were exceptions.
One of the Moabites that married an Israelite was Ruth. Ruth became the wife of Boaz. Boaz would have been the grandfather of Jesse, the great-grandfather, I believe I’ve got the generations right, of David.
God made an exception because of the heart of Ruth. Her heart was for the God of Israel. We see that God desires that people turn to the Lord.
The scriptures tell us that he desires that all men would come to know him. Well, as we’re looking at Jeremiah, Jeremiah is living now and he’s got all of these nations around there that are still causing Israel problems. Israel is being really chastised by God, taken into captivity, the northern kingdom by the Assyrians, the southern kingdom 100 years later, approximately, by the Babylonians.
There’s very few people left in the land. The land is becoming desolate, as God said it would. They’re looking at all the nations around them, and Jeremiah says, well, God hasn’t forgotten, and God will judge.
The thing is, one of the things that the scriptures tell us is that vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and we are to turn to the Lord to look for vengeance, and we’re not to take vengeance ourselves. God is going to deal with these nations. The amazing thing is he begins to deal with these nations.
He’s dealing with them because of their character and because of their rebellion and because of the gods that they worship. But he’s also not done with these nations, and one of the nations he’s not done with is Moab. So let’s take a look at Chapter 48.
Against Moab thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Woe unto Nebo! for it is spoiled:
Kiriathaim is confounded and taken:
Misgab is confounded and dismayed.
Jeremiah 48:1
These are major cities in the land of Moab. Nebo is also a reference to a pagan god as well, and oftentimes the names that they would attest to their cities have ties to their gods. There shall be no more praise of Moab and Heshbon. They have devised evil against it. Come and let us cut off from being a nation. Also thou shalt be cut down.
There shall be no more praise of Moab:
in Heshbon they have devised evil against it;
come, and let us cut it off from being a nation.
Also thou shalt be cut down, O Madmen;
the sword shall pursue thee.
Jeremiah 48:2
And so the Lord is telling Moab through Jeremiah, your judgment day is coming. You think that you are so clever, you think that you’re so strong, and you’re very proud.
The history of Moab is that it was a very, during the time of Israel that was in the land, Moab was also very prosperous. If you go to that part of Jordan today, it is not prosperous. My wife and I took a trip over to Petra, which is in Edom, which is a little bit south of where Moab is, but you look at the farmland in Jordan, and it’s relatively barren, and there isn’t much crops, and they don’t have water.
What water do they get? Israel is helping them with. And it’s just desolate. Right across the Jordan River in Israel, things are plush and green, and there’s crops and all kinds of things.
Not that case today in the land of Jordan. It doesn’t nearly have the crops that Israel does. And part of that was judgment that was brought upon it by God, because if you look at the time, as I mentioned, when Jeremiah was living and before that, Moab was a very prosperous nation.
They had a lot of crops, and they were very proud of it. They were very proud. They viewed that they did this all themselves, and they didn’t need the God of the Israelis or the Jews to help them.
They had their gods. Their chief god was Chemosh, and he was a god that was very similar to Marduk, and they would do human sacrifice to him. They would sacrifice their children to him.
It was a despicable belief system and religious system that that’s what they were caught up in. And the amazing thing is if you look at these people, they had a history of knowing the true God. Lot came with Abraham into the land of the Canaanites with Abraham.
He knew God, and it says that Lot was a righteous man. He believed in God, and yet he was vexed continually by the wickedness that was being committed in Sodom and Gomorrah, and he didn’t leave, nor did he really stand up against that wickedness. And his family, for the most part, except two daughters, were lost because of that wickedness.
And we see that Lot, being vexed, did not set a spiritual tone and leadership for his children, and his two girls didn’t trust that God was a big enough god to bring them husbands and preserve the line of their father, and that’s why they committed incest with their dad and had babies by their father, got him drunk and had babies by him. And those are the ones that became the founders of Moab and the Ammonites and the Moabites. So we see that these people are going to be judged by God because of their wickedness, and it says,
Moab is destroyed;
her little ones have caused a cry to be heard.
For in the going up of Luhith
continual weeping shall go up;
for in the going down of Horonaim
the enemies have heard a cry of destruction.Jeremiah 48:4-5
In other words, Jeremiah is saying, if you want to save your lives at all, you need to flee from your land, because God is going to judge your land and bring destruction upon it.
Go into the wilderness. Flee, save your lives, and be like the health in the wilderness.
For because thou hast trusted in thy works and in thy treasures,
thou shalt also be taken:
and Chemosh shall go forth into captivity
with his priests and his princes together.Jeremiah 48:7
And one of the things that would happen is when nations would come in and fight with other nations, when they gained victory over them, they would take their gods back into their lands to show the people that the gods of their nation were stronger than the gods of that nation. One of the things that you see that Nebuchadnezzar did with the Jews is he took the instruments of the temple in Jerusalem back into Babylon with him, and it was to show the people that his gods were stronger than the gods of the Jews.
But the only thing is, we were studying this morning, and we saw that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, when they were being cast into the fiery furnace, the Lord himself appeared with them and preserved their lives so that there wasn’t even the smell of smoke on their clothes. The ropes burned off their hands, but their clothes were not harmed. It showed the power of God.
And then Nebuchadnezzar stood and said that this god of these men should be the god of all gods, and he’s still not to the point where he’s ready to make him his god, but that’s coming. But even though he had the instruments under his control, that didn’t mean he had God under his control because God allowed him to take those for a purpose, and that’s coming later in Daniel. But the thing is, what Jeremiah is saying here is their god can’t do anything because he’s not a god, and so he’s going to be taken away, the priests are going to be taken away, and their idols are going to be taken away, and they can’t stop it.
And then he goes on and he says, And the spoiler shall come upon every city, and no city shall escape. The valley also shall perish, and the plain shall be destroyed as the Lord hath spoken. And if you would have gone to Moab at this time, the plain and the valley would have been ripe with crops, they would have been beautiful, and they’re going to all be consumed and destroyed.
And like I mentioned, that part of the world still is not like Israel is today. Israel is blossoming like a rose in the desert. The rest of them are not, and it still hasn’t.
And part of that judgment is because of their pride and their arrogance. They didn’t need God. They didn’t need the God of the Jewish people.
And when the Jewish people were coming out of Egypt, they were going to do everything they could do to prevent them from coming in their land or through their land or by their land. And Moses had gone to the Moabites and told them, We don’t have any intention of taking your land. We don’t want to do anything.
All we want to do is pass by it as we go into Canaan because we’re going to go up along the east side of the Jordan River, cross over the Jordan River into the land of Canaan, which had been promised to the Israelites. And Moab would have nothing of it. And as I mentioned, they tried to destroy them and destroy the Jewish people and destroy their relationship with the Lord.
Moab hath been at ease from his youth,
and he hath settled on his lees,
and hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel,
neither hath he gone into captivity:
therefore his taste remained in him,
and his scent is not changed.
Jeremiah 48:11
Well, you’re probably wondering, What in the world are they talking about there? Going from vessel to vessel and has been at ease.
Well, to go from vessel to vessel, what they would do is if you would have wine, drinks made out of grapes, what you would do is you’d take it and take the vessel and you’d pour the juice from one vessel to another and then the dregs or the parts of the fruit that had remained in the juice would begin to filter out and remain in the old vessel. And so you’d trip from vessel to vessel to get pure wine without the dregs. Well, what God is saying is they had nothing that ever happened to them.
And they thought they were so proud. And yet they didn’t worship God, but they were proud in themselves. Look at us.
We haven’t been taken into captivity like the Jewish people. We haven’t had to experience being overrun by other countries. Look at us.
And they were very proud in themselves. It says there that they looked at themselves and were very proud and arrogant. And God says, Well, I’m going to cause you to be taken and poured from vessel to vessel because you’ve never been poured from vessel to vessel.
All the dregs are still in your life. All of the wickedness and sin is still there. You’ve never had to face it and deal with the reality of it because you think you have no problems.
You know, this is similar to a lot of people today. There’s a lot of people today that think they have no sin problems. And they become very self-righteous.
Well, look at me. And people are really good at comparing ourselves against other people and say, You know, I’m not near as bad as him. You know, that guy over there, he’s got a real drinking problem.
I don’t have a drinking problem, but he does. That person over there has got a real drug problem. That person over there, he’s lost his family.
He’s lost his job. I don’t have any of that. But you’ve still got a sin problem.
And part of the problem is your pride and arrogance. And you think you’re beyond need of a Savior. And this is who these people were.
They were filled with pride. They were filled with arrogance. They felt they could do what they wanted to do when they wanted to do it because nothing ever happened to them.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a child that’s been raised that way. I remember growing up with a young man who was raised that way. His parents never disciplined him, never disciplined him.
And when he did something wrong, whether it was at school or to another child, it was all the other child’s fault or the school’s fault. It was somebody’s, but it wasn’t their son’s fault. And their son never had to deal with the fact that he was a sinner that caused issues and problems not only in his own life but in other people’s lives.
And what happened, it didn’t help him when he grew up. He ended up getting into drugs. He ended up really losing his mind because of drugs because he never did anything wrong.
And he never did anything wrong. And his parents told him he never did anything wrong. And they made sure that everybody knew he never did anything wrong.
And so when I met him one day, and I said, What are you doing here? Because he was up at the psych ward in one of the hospitals in town, and I thought he was working there. And he said, Oh, no, I’m here. They caught me running naked through the river valley.
But he never did anything wrong. You see, that’s the attitude of these people. They never do anything wrong.
You’ve probably seen kids like that at a grocery store. They never do anything wrong. And the thing is, unless you come to the reality, you are a sinner that needs God and needs his salvation, and you need to walk with the Lord, and you have to go by his standard and not by your own standard.
I was talking to Roberta’s cousin yesterday, and we were talking, and I said, You know, one of the great biggest problems that we have today in the church is that the church has been taught by Christian psychologists that the real problem that Christians have is low self-esteem. And I’m going, That’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says we’ve got a problem like the Moabites.
We’ve got too high self-esteem. We think we don’t need God. We think we’re God unto ourselves.
And if you look at, there was a famous Christian psychologist, and that’s what he’d say is, In order to help people, you need to increase their self-esteem. The Bible says that I need to deal with my self-esteem in the opposite direction. I’m to humble myself.
And it says that I’m to examine my heart, but not to discover how I’m going to live from my heart attitude because the heart’s deceitful and desperately wicked. Who can know it? That’s what the words of Jeremiah. And it says here that these people were filled with self-esteem.
They thought they were wonderful. They were so great. They didn’t need God.
They didn’t need any other people. They had everything they needed. But one day their world was coming crashing down because God was going to judge them by Nebuchadnezzar as well.
And they were going to be taken captive. And they were going to be taken out of their land. And they were going to be put to death.
And they were going to lose everything they had. And how were they going to deal with it then? And so he goes on and he says, Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will send unto him wanderers that shall cause him to wander, and shall empty his vessels, and break their bottles. And Moab shall be ashamed of Chemosh, as the house of Israel was ashamed of Bethel, their confidence.
Now what is Jeremiah saying there? Well, Moab had their god, Chemosh. What a god. You sacrifice your children to him.
You sacrifice humans to him. He can’t do anything for you except bring really wicked and evil behavior to your life. Well, Israel, he said, it’s going to be just like Israel was with Bethel.
What is he making reference to there? You’ve got to go back, all the way back to when we were doing the study on the kings. And you saw that when Jeroboam became the king of the northern tribes of Israel at the split of the kingdom, right after Solomon died, when Rehoboam took over the southern kingdom and Jeroboam took over the northern kingdom, Jeroboam was given the opportunity by God, if you will follow me and do what I say and worship me, I will allow you and your descendants to have this northern kingdom as your kingdom. But if you don’t, I will judge you.
Well, what did Jeroboam do? He immediately went out, cast two golden calves, put one at Dan and one at Bethel, and what he did is he had the people go to Bethel and make that the center of their worship. Why? Now what’s the significance of the golden calf? The golden calf was what Aaron had cast when he came out of Egypt and the people were demanding that he make us a god. Why? Because Moses had been on the mountain for 40 days and they thought that Moses was dead and they heard God speak prior to Moses going up there and they were terrified and now they heard nothing except thundering and stuff from the top of the mountain and they were terrified that Moses was gone.
We need a god to follow instead of calling on a true god. And then he went back to the gods of Egypt. The golden calf was a god that came out of Egypt.
Worshiping the cow was one of the gods that the Egyptians worshipped. They made that their god. So what did Jeroboam do? He makes the golden calf the god and says the people should go and worship there.
The nation of Israel, even when they split into two nations, was never told that the northern tribes were not to go down into Jerusalem to worship. Never told that. God never said that they weren’t.
He said that he would allow Jeroboam to remain the king of the northern ten tribes if he obeyed him and did what he said. Even when they went down they would come back. Jeroboam said if they go down they won’t come back.
They’ll unite again with the southern kingdoms. I’m going to make this god a false god. And what they did is they eventually became ashamed of that god.
Why were they ashamed of it? Because it couldn’t deliver them. It could do nothing for them. And it was replaced by Baal under Ahab and Jezebel, which were even worse.
They were Sidonian gods that had their roots back in the Tower of Babel. And we see that they began to worship them as well. And then they worshipped other gods.
And God ultimately took them into captivity under the Assyrians. And they went into captivity 100 years before the southern kingdom of Judah. And they were ashamed.
Ashamed of their god. It could do nothing. In other words, their god had no power.
And he’s saying your god has no power either because it’s no god at all. All it is is something you worship but it’s no god. He says, How say ye, we are mighty and strong men for the war.
So how can you say that? How can you say you’re mighty and strong men for the war but you’ve never been tested and when the test comes you’re going to fail miserably because you haven’t put your trust in God. You put your trust in yourselves and you’ll be defeated. Moab is spoiled and gone up out of our cities and its chosen young men are gone down to the slaughter, saith the king whose name is the Lord of Hosts.
So who’s telling him that? The Lord of Hosts. Who’s the Lord of Hosts in the Old Testament? The Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus himself is telling these people, your sons will be slaughtered because of your attitudes and pride.
The calamity of Moab is near to come and his affliction hasteneth fast. All ye that are about him bemoan him and all ye that know his name say, how is his strong staff broken and the beautiful rod? In other words, he had such a strong staff, he never was defeated, he never had any problems and all of a sudden that’s broken and he had this beautiful rod and that’s not there. Thou daughter that dost inhabit Dibbon, come down from thy glory and sit in thirst for the spoiler of Moab shall come upon thee and he shall destroy thy strongholds.
Now, we don’t have time to go through everything by verse by verse, but just to summarize, Jeremiah continues and goes on and gives them all the things that they’ve done that are wrong and it all centers on their pride and arrogance and their lack of humility in turning to God and trusting in themselves and creating.