We want to continue our study through the book of Jeremiah. And tonight, we’re coming to Jeremiah chapter 49. Jeremiah chapter 49 begins by continuing to bring prophecies that Jeremiah has given, as speaking with a word from the Lord. And in chapter 49, you look at prophecies he brings against the nation of Ammon, against the nation of Edom, against the city of Damascus, and against Arabia, which would be what is today what we refer to as oftentimes much of the Sinai Peninsula. I put a map up on the board here. I don’t have a map that shows Israel during the time in the Middle East, but this shows pretty much a current picture of Israel.
But I want to show you where the nations are that we’re talking about. First of all, we talked last week about Moab. Moab would be located in this area right here. And Ammon, where the Ammonites were from, would be located right here. Ammon, Jordan, is east of Jerusalem. And you can actually, when you see lights, and Jerusalem is all lit up and stuff at night, you can actually see, for example, when they had the giant menorah during the time of when the Greeks tried to take over and Antiochus Epiphanes desecrated the temple and you had the revolt of the Maccabees.
They had a giant menorah that was put up, and you can actually see the menorah in Ammon, Jordan, where Ammon is today. So the distance isn’t real far, but that gives you an idea that that is where Ammon, Jordan is, and I mean where the Ammonites were at because Ammon has its roots in the nation of Ammon. And then down here, for example, this is Eilat, the southernmost point of Israel.
Petra is located right about here, and that’s part of the Edomite kingdom. And so the kingdom of Edom was below Moab and encompassed about this. The Nalakites were over in here, and they were to the west of the Edomites.
Philistines, as we studied earlier, they were in the Gaza Strip, which would be right in here, where the Gaza Strip is today. That’s where the Philistines were, and this is Ashkelon, that would have been a Philistine city. That’s Ashdod, that would have been a Philistine city.
So they encompassed this area here at the time of David and much of the time that we’re studying in the Old Testament. The West Bank isn’t the West Bank. This is the main portion of, this would have been, Judah would have been down in here.
And so we see that what is referred to as the West Bank on the news is really Judah. And then Samaria would have been north, as we studied the two kingdoms of the kings. Samaria would have been north of Jerusalem, and that would have been this area here.
And for example, when Jesus was teaching, he went to the woman at the well in Samaria. That would have been at this point about in here, north and east of Jerusalem. And what the Jews would do if they had to go from up at Nazareth or up by the Galilee, the Sea of Galilee, they would walk way around here to avoid having to go through Samaria.
And so you can see that what Jesus did is he made a point of going through Samaria specifically to talk to this woman. So that kind of gives you a little bit of the lay of the land. And then up here, this area right in here is referred to as the Golan Heights would be up in here.
And this just south of the Golan Heights, right north of where Amman or the Ammonites would be, would have been the inheritance of the two and a half tribes of Judah on the east side of the Jordan. They would have been in the Golan Heights and down into just a little bit south of the Sea of Galilee. We’re going to look at one of the cities tonight, which is one of the ten cities on the east side of the Sea of Galilee, which are called the Decapolis during the time of Jesus.
Those were all Gentile cities. And Jesus went over there one time, it’s recorded in scriptures, and that’s where he cast out the demon of the demon-possessed man and the swine ran into the Sea of Galilee. And that occurred right up in here.
So the scriptures, the things that we study in the Old Testament are still happening in these regions of the world today. As you look at this map, what you see is up here is Lebanon today, and Tyre and Sidon would have been cities right there along the coast. You have Syria, which is still here today, that would have been there.
And then if we had a bigger map of the Middle East, which I had up earlier, but us, Syria, would have been up here. Babylon would have been over here. Iraq and Iran are there. And Babylon would have encompassed those two nations. So we see that the same areas are in play in the world today, and oftentimes with the same players, it’s just that they’ve taken a little bit different names. So I wanted to put that up there so you can kind of have a little idea of what we’re looking at tonight.
Tonight we’re looking at prophecies against Ammon. The Ammonites were descendants of Lot. They were the descendants of his younger daughter. And again, the older daughter, her son was Moab. They became the Moabites. The younger daughter, her son was Ammon, who became the Ammonites.
And both of those daughters really did not trust in God, because what they did is they willfully chose to do that which God had said should not be done. That is, they had sexual relations with their father so that they could become impregnated and have children because they didn’t trust God that he would be able to provide for them a husband to carry on their father’s name. And so they didn’t show a trust in God, and they were greatly influenced by what had gone on in the city of Sodom and Gomorrah.
And that’s why God had destroyed it, was because of the wicked and evil things that were going on in that city. And these were the only two descendants of Lot that survived the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, because he had other daughters and other sons that died because they would not leave. Because it says that he had sons-in-law, so we know that he had married daughters, and it also says he had sons.
They wouldn’t leave because they were so enamored by what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah. But these two girls were also influenced greatly by it, and the nations that descended from their sons were also nations that knew of God, but did that which was wicked in the eyes of the Lord, and especially when it came to Israel. Israel, when they came out of Egypt, would have come up, and they wanted to come along here, up by the Dead Sea, and they would have gone through the land of the Ammonites and the Moabites.
And the Ammonites, remember last week we studied about how the Moabites, last week we studied about how Balaam, the king of Moab, had tried to hire Balaam to curse Israel, because he did not want them coming into his land, he did not want to help them, and he wanted to curse them. The Ammonites were not much different. As those of you who remember when we were studying earlier in Jeremiah, we saw that God had established that the people of Judah, that were not taken away by Nebuchadnezzar initially, would remain in the land of Judah.
And Nebuchadnezzar had appointed a Jewish man to be the governor in the city of Jerusalem, over the province that would be Judah, of the Babylonian Empire. It was a man that came from the Ammonite kingdom, from the capital of Ammon, that was hired by the king of the Ammonites to go into Jerusalem and kill that governor, and to cause disruption and to come against the leadership of Israel that had been left there, or the leadership of Judah that had been left there. And so we see that the Ammonites, they had no love for Israel.
God is going to judge them, and so he’s pronouncing a curse against them. It appears to the Jewish remnant that God wasn’t doing anything, but God was speaking through Jeremiah now that yes, the Moabites, judgment was coming against them, and judgment was coming against the Ammonites as well. Let’s look at chapter 49, beginning at verse 1.
Concerning the Ammonites, thus saith the Lord, Hath Israel no sons? Hath he no heir? Why then doth our king inherit Gad, and his people dwell in his cities?
Jeremiah 49:1
So the question that Jeremiah asks, if Israel doesn’t have any king and there’s no heir, why is the God-given inheritance to the land of Gad? That would have been, Gad was one of the two and a half tribes that was on the east side of the Jordan River, and they would have been up in the area of where the Ammonites’ kingdom was.
Jeremiah is saying, if God has forgotten Israel, and hasn’t anything to do with them, why would he give an inheritance to this tribe where the Ammonites, right next to where the Ammonites were? Because the Ammonites said, God doesn’t want anything to do with Israel, and he’s done with them, and besides, we’ve got our own God to serve. Verse 2,
Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord,
that I will cause an alarm of war to be heard in Rabbah of the Ammonites;
and it shall be a desolate heap,
and her daughters shall be burned with fire:
then shall Israel be heir unto them that were his heirs, saith the Lord. Jeremiah 49:2
Now, what is Rabbah? There were two kings that Israel defeated when they came in, and these two kings were kings of cities that were located where the Ammonites were. The city of Rabbah was a city where, remember the two kings were Sihon and Og. Sihon was the king of the city of Rabbah, and he was defeated by the Israelites when they came into the land, before they entered into the land of Jerusalem under Joshua.
The other king was in Heshbon, which was another Ammonite city, and that would have been Og. And so both of these kings were defeated, and their areas were defeated as they had tried to prevent Israel from entering the land, and the Lord caused them to be defeated. Well, these cities still remain during the time of Jeremiah, and he is speaking against these particular two cities, and he is saying, these cities are not going to remain, but they shall be destroyed.
They are going to be destroyed because God has given a portion of this land to the tribe of Gad. Gad will inherit it, and that is what Jeremiah was saying in the first two verses. If God isn’t there, doesn’t Israel still have a king? Well, there is a king that is coming, where the inheritance is going to be delivered, and that king is Jesus.
And when he comes and sits upon his throne, Israel will receive her whole kingdom. Right now, even today, today we know, as you can see from this map, the world wants to take away this and say it doesn’t belong to Israel. They want to take away this and say it doesn’t belong to Israel.
Prior to the Six Day War, there was even more land that was given to Arabs. If you saw a prior to the Six Day War map of Israel, what it was when they partitioned it under the British rule, it was just about an impossible piece of land to defend. But yet God gave them the victory, and he gave them even more than this.
Israel, actually, after the Six Day War, they inhabited the whole West Bank. They also inhabited the whole Sinai Peninsula, all the way down in here. And they also basically, they had all of Gaza.
They basically took all of this in the Six Day War. They gave back the West Bank. They gave back Gaza later on under Sharon.
Then they gave back the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt after the Six Day War. But the Word of God says that the Sinai Peninsula, all of this part of Jordan, which would be the inheritance of the two and a half tribes going all the way up to the Euphrates River, is going to be what is Israel during the time of Jesus. Because that’s the land that was promised.
The closest it’s ever come was during the reign of David and Solomon, but they still did not have all of the land. So the promise has never been completely fulfilled, but it will be fulfilled. And Jeremiah says, does Israel have no king? Yes, they do.
Even though there is no king left in Jerusalem at the time he’s saying that, Israel still has a king. That’s the Messiah that’s coming, Jesus. And we see that they also are saying, half Israel no sons, half no heir.
And the thing is, yes, there is an heir. The heir is the coming Messiah. And so Jesus is speaking of that, and so he’s saying, the Ammonites are trying to prevent Israel from what has rightfully been promised to them, and they want to destroy Jerusalem.
They did that by bringing the man whose name was Ishmael, who was actually Jewish, and they hired him to be the guy that would go in and kill the governor of the province of Babylon that had been set up by Nebuchadnezzar, who was Jewish, and also some of the royalty that had been left behind. And then he goes on and he says, Well, let’s go back to verse 2 and read that again. Therefore, because there is an inheritance, because there is a king, he says, Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will cause an alarm of war to be heard in Raba of the Ammonites, and it shall be a desolate heap, and their daughters shall be burned with fire.
Then shall Israel be heir unto them that were his heirs, saith the Lord. This was not coming at the time that Jeremiah was given this word of the Lord, because Israel really was, there wasn’t anything left of the nation, per se, because they had been taken into captivity. Those that hadn’t been taken into captivity had fled to Egypt against the counsel of Jeremiah and the word of the Lord.
So we see that there was very, very few Jewish people left, even in the nation of Israel. It was a really non-functioning country, if you would, because God had scattered the people into the nations, and the land was left desolate. But he says it’s not going to remain that way.
They’re going to be coming back into the land, because they will be able to take control of them and the daughters of the Ammonites will suffer because of it. Verse 4,
Wherefore gloriest thou in the valleys,
thy flowing valley, O backsliding daughter?
that trusted in her treasures, saying, Who shall come unto me?
Jeremiah 49:4
Now, the Ammonites were influenced by the Moabites.
They had the same problem, arrogance and pride. They didn’t want to trust in God. They wanted to trust in themselves. And they looked at their land and said, look at what we have done. And he’s saying, you’re trusting in your valleys, you’re trusting in your land, but who gives that to you and who has enabled you to have that is the Lord. And he says, but you’re a backsliding daughter because you’re not trusting in me.
Now, why were they a backsliding daughter? It goes all the way back to the daughter of Lot that was really the mother of this kingdom. She was a backsliding daughter. She had seen God’s judgment come against Sodom and Gomorrah.
She had seen her mother turned to stone because she looked back. And people say, well, that was because she looked and there was some type of a nuclear explosion that occurred. And so, consequently, she looked at Sodom. No. What she did by the word and description of their mother is she looked back. She longed for what remained in Sodom and Gomorrah.
Now, people would say, well, what mother wouldn’t do that if some of her children were being destroyed? But God didn’t say that she should look back. He said, flee. Flee.
Don’t desire anything from there. And she looked longingly back. So God destroyed her because she didn’t want to go with her husband Lot. She didn’t want to be delivered. And she looked back. Well, both of these daughters had seen that happen. They saw what happened when you look longingly back at that which God had set apart for destruction and judgment. That judgment comes on you. That’s why the Ammonites are referred to as a backsliding daughter. They had come from a woman who knew who God was. Her father was called a righteous man, although he was vexed. That’s told us in Peter.
Peter tells us that Lot was a righteous man who was vexed continually as he lived in Sodom and Gomorrah and saw the wickedness around him. And instead of taking his family and fleeing from it, he remained there and became vexed. Well, it didn’t impact his righteousness in the sight of God because he still knew and loved the Lord.
But the problem was, it impacted all his family. He lost family, and not only did he lose family because of his lack of decisive action to do that which was righteous, but he lost those that even went with him. And we see that his daughter and both of his daughters were backsliding women who didn’t do God’s will nor trust in the Lord, and it impacted their own descendants.
They had the same attitudes. One of the things that you see here is oftentimes the attitudes of the nations that came out of the people that rejected God had attitudes the same as their forefathers. We’ll see that when we look at the Edomites in just a moment.
We saw it with the Moabites. We’re seeing it with the Ammonites. They knew of God.
They didn’t want to serve God. They didn’t want to trust God. They didn’t want to believe in God.
They didn’t have faith in God. And so they were backsliders. They turned from God, and it impacted their children and their children’s children and down the line.Behold, I will bring a fear upon thee, saith the Lord God of hosts, from all those that be about thee, and ye shall be driven out, every man right forth, and none shall gather up him that wandereth. It’s interesting. One could look at this verse and look at what’s happening in the world today and say some of that could be an impact on what we’re referring to as Palestinians.
A lot of the people that we are referring to as Palestinians in the world today came from the kingdom of Jordan. They’re Arabs that came from Jordan. Who’s in Jordan? The Moabites and Ammonites. It’s interesting. It says that they’re going to be driven around. They’re going to be wanderers, and nobody’s going to want them. If you look at what it is today with the Palestinian people, nobody wants them. The Arabs don’t even want them. The Arabs make a big fuss about Israel and that Israel needs to give all their land to the Palestinians.
But when, for example, all that’s happening in the Gaza Strip right now, you’ve got all these people that are being displaced because of Hamas and this cult of death that uses the, quote, Palestinians, the people of Gaza, those that are really a lot of them from Jordan and Egypt. It uses them as human shields. Some of the proposals have been to take these people and move them to Egypt, to take these people and move them to Jordan, to take these people and move them to Lebanon.
Nobody wants them. The Jordanians don’t want them. The Egyptians don’t want them.
The Egyptians facilitate what’s going on in Gaza today by allowing arms and stuff to be smuggled in through Egypt, but they don’t want to take the Gazans into Egypt. They’re putting up their army to prevent the Gazans from coming into Egypt. Nobody wants them.
If you look at the scriptures here, it says that they’re going to be driven from their land and nobody will want them. Nobody will take them. And that’s exactly what you’re seeing happen in the world today with those, many of whom came from the very area where the Moabites and the Ammonites were from.
Then it says in verse 6,
And afterward I will bring again the captivity of the children of Ammon, saith the Lord. Jeremiah 49:6
God says that He’s not done with Ammon, but He is going to bring again this captivity to them. And the very thing that they attempted to do to Israel during the time of Jeremiah, God will bring upon them later on.
I believe that we’re seeing some of that even in the day in which we live. And you also saw it happening throughout history as the Moabite and Ammonite kingdoms did not remain as kingdoms with their kings, but they were brought under subjection into what became the nation of Jordan. And that’s what really much of the Moabite and Ammonite kingdom, as well as part of what was the inheritance of Israel, became Jordan.
God’s word is fulfilled and God’s word is true. And when God says that He will judge, He judges. And what appeared to be impossible during the time of Jeremiah happened.
Israel is still Israel today. Israel was brought back into the land just as God said it would be brought back into the land. The Moabites and Ammonites have not.
And they will not be. We studied last week that God said that He will bring back the Moabites when Jesus comes in rules and reigns during the Millennial Kingdom. But the indication here is that captivity is what will result for the Ammonites.
People need to understand that God’s word is serious and that God’s word is true. People today, you’ve got, there’s a whole movement in the church and many people that are prominent, we talked about some of it before during prayer time. Prominent in Christianity today that say God is done with Israel and the church is Israel and we shouldn’t support Israel.
Yet the word of God says that Israel, exactly what’s happened with the nation of Israel, would happen with the nation of Israel. The way that the world would treat the nation of Israel is what’s happening to the nation of Israel. You’re seeing more and more nations turn against Israel.
The Bible says that it’s going to culminate where all the nations will turn against Israel, including the United States. And that then the Lord will deliver Israel. And one of the things that Israel will flee to is it says that they will flee down to Rebola which is down here in the land of Eden, which we’ll study next week.
But when Jesus comes, they’re going to flee down here, the remnant of the nation of Israel, and then the Lord will come and deliver them as the Russians and the Egyptians, the Russians and those from Turkey and those from Iran, as well as their allies will come against Israel and attempt to destroy them, and God will intervene. So the things that you see happening during the time of Nebuchadnezzar, and God foretells things that are going to happen more than 2,500 years later.