Jim Styles - Class 1: Redirecting Your Life for God

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:00

   Jeremiah is a topic that years ago I got interested in. I can remember one time I started reading a series of articles in the Testimony magazine that Tony Benson had done on the friends of Jeremiah. That's actually what caught my interest. He had just written a whole series on different people that would have been Jeremiah's friends in the midst of all the trouble that Jeremiah went through.

2. 0:20

   Who did he talk to? Who were his friends? Who was his little group of people that he got along with? It was interesting to me because many of those characters, I didn't know who they were. I mean, like the Josiahs, that's fine, you know that. Some of the other ones that are there, you might recognize Gedaliahs and stuff.

3. 0:34

   But there's a whole bunch of other fellows I had not heard of before, like the whole family of Shaphan. I didn't know what that was at the time. I found that really interesting. And as I got more into Jeremiah, I can remember the whole subject just became more interesting because I realized that as a young person, we really had totally skipped Jeremiah in Sunday school.

4. 0:52

   I really didn't do much with it at all. And even as a community, I probably knew more about like Jeremiah 31 and 33 and all the prophecies about the restoration than I did about what are those first 20 chapters all about. It just seemed like they went on forever and ever in the readings.

5. 1:07

   And, you know, what is this? All this stuff in the first 20 chapters, what in the world is going on? So hopefully this weekend, if you stick with it, I think you'll see that there actually is a lot of continuity to the book. You actually make some sense of it. And one of my goals is to try to piece some of those things together for you about the story of Jeremiah because the book is, to some extent, after the first 20 chapters, a lot of it really is out of order.

6. 1:31

   So that's the game plan. And I also mentioned to you, for those of you that are good at taking shorthand notes and all that, which I can't do, you can write down everything you want to. I don't bother handing out notes anymore because what's really nice today is that you can put all the PowerPoints on thumb drives and you can just take them with you if you want.

7. 1:49

   Those of you that have computers or if you know somebody that has one here, I'll leave that up there all weekend and you can just copy all the PowerPoints, even though the lecture from Tuesday night is on there and everything we do this weekend. I like to teach with PowerPoints. I got used to doing that in public school, I guess, is what happened to keep the kids awake.

8. 2:04

   If I didn't use PowerPoints, they just would nod right off or start texting or something like that. So if your head stays down too long, then I know there's something going on.

9. 2:16

   Anyways, the story of Jeremiah. I think what happens in our community, if you're like me, it was really easy to put off a study of Jeremiah. It's almost like Revelation or something like that. It just seems like the book is so long and complicated that it's just too much to tackle, easier to tackle one of the minor prophets.

10. 2:33

    And we really don't talk much about it in Sunday school. The chapters are out of chronological order. Once you get past chapter 20, I think you'll see that really things are out of order. So we just sort of leave it as like, well, someday I'll get to it. And, well, your day has come.

11. 2:46

    So those of you that stick it out this weekend, that's the game plan. We are going to tackle Jeremiah. And hopefully everybody goes away knowing a lot more about Jeremiah than you did when you came. Christadelphian resources on Jeremiah. When you start looking around, like what have we got in our community on Jeremiah?

12. 3:02

    And we definitely have a book by C.C. Walker on Jeremiah. If you've ever looked at that at all, some of you may have gone through that. That's one of our resources. Brother Harry Whitaker wrote a book on Jeremiah, which really doesn't get into prophecy at all. It's just about Jeremiah, which is nice.

13. 3:18

    And it's called Of Whom the World Was Not Worthy. I actually found that one of the most useful resources because he's done a lot of the legwork of putting together the pieces of the story of Jeremiah's life. The Friends of Jeremiah in the Testimony magazine, I really like that. That was a good introductory one to get into.

14. 3:33

    And I really enjoyed speaker's commentary, or what you might call over here, or Cook's commentary, or I don't know what you guys know it as here. A lot of F.C. Cook's books ended up in Barnes Notes as well. So that if you look at that, you'll find there's a lot of good research that people have already done on Jeremiah, on the history of the period.

15. 3:51

    And those things were really interesting. If you're not a reader and you like to listen instead, I really enjoyed the classes Brother Ron Cowie has given on Jeremiah. Yeah, Brother John Martin has done seven classes on Jeremiah, which I found really good. And if you get on LivoniaTapes.com, you'll find there's six classes that I did at Hanover Bible School just maybe two years ago or so.

16. 4:12

    If you've never used LivoniaTapes.com, it's a really great reference for finding good Christadelphian material. For those of you who like to listen, I think the younger people coming up, a lot of them are more listeners than they are readers. And it's nice that we have that technology available for us today. I happen to be somebody who listens a lot.

17. 4:30

    I like to get MP3s and listen wherever I'm going and plug them in my ear. And I got used to listening to Christadelphian classes on tapes. Now we have wonderful things like MP3s and all that. And you can take a little MP3 player and you can put like a thousand classes on it.

18. 4:44

    And it's great. But if you get on LivoniaTapes.com, Andrew set that up, my son Andrew, so that people could upload good classes from all around the world and put them in and they categorize them by subject. And then you can just check out. I just looked up Jeremiah on there. And that's what was available a few months ago on Jeremiah.

19. 5:03

    You can see there's a series of classes that are there. And what's really nice is that when you look over on the side, if you ever see little boxes like this on the side over there, that means, oh, the PowerPoints are there too. And sometimes there's little notes there about the study notes are there as well, the handouts that people did.

20. 5:19

    So that's a great source of material in our community today. And it's all free. That's the good news about that. So if you ever do that or if you're ever somewhere where you listen to a series of classes and you have them and you'd like to share them with the community, you can just sign on on LivoniaTapes.com and you can upload those classes and Andrew will add them onto the website.

21. 5:40

    So the game plan for this weekend is the first classes on Jeremiah being redirected. He started out thinking he would be a priest and God redirected his life. The second one we'll look at this morning after lunch or this afternoon would be the one on the failure of the people. Then we'll look in the third class on Jeremiah's struggle with God's plan.

22. 5:58

    I found that the most fascinating of all of them, really, because that's the part of it that I had never understood. To what extent in the Bible record is recorded the inability of the prophet to reconcile what he thought about his community with God's plan. And we're actually told as you go through the record, you can see this online, of how he's struggling with the fact that God says, Go say this!

23. 6:20

    And he just doesn't want to say it because he can't really believe things are that bad. Then we'll look tomorrow in the Sunday school class at Jehoiakim, the king without a conscience. There's a lot in Jeremiah's prophecies about Jehoiakim's time. And then, really wonderfully, the exhortation fits in perfect with the Rechabites. So that's the goal there, is to look at Jeremiah 35 with the Rechabites.

24. 6:41

    And then we'll end up in the Sunday afternoon program tomorrow with looking at Zedekiah, which is pretty sad because Zedekiah, we classify him as the king without a backbone, because he just couldn't stand up to what was going on in the community. He knew what the right thing was to do, but he wasn't willing to do it because he had too much other influence in his life.

25. 7:00

    But the basic message of Jeremiah, the theme for this weekend, is change before the end comes. And when you look at that concept, it's very applicable today. God's given all of us plenty of warning shots that, hey, the kingdom's coming. You can just hear people out in public today that realize that, wow, with all the pollution going on, with the lack of water that's there, the population of the world going up, all the troubles that this world is experiencing, we know something's got to change.

26. 7:28

    Then we were given the sign of Israel. You know, that's like one of the greatest signs, and all the things that God keeps doing to throw that in the news to remind us that that will be the troubling spot of the world, and all the focus will be on Israel. And God's kept giving us all these warnings like he did in Jeremiah's time.

27. 7:46

    But Jeremiah's message was very clear that once it starts, it's going to be too late to change. God's given you all these opportunities to get ready for the events that Jeremiah says are coming. And if you have the faith to believe it, you'll change. But once it starts, it's going to be too late.

28. 8:05

    And I found it's an interesting message when you compare that with the situation that we're in today. God's given us all these opportunities. When you look at the historical period for Jeremiah, we have a context for this weekend. So Jeremiah prophesies, and he really starts off in the time of Josiah. But when you go back through the history of the kings, and you realize, well, before that, there was Hezekiah.

29. 8:26

    And that's our good king Hezekiah, and all the wonderful things he did. And as you go through this, you realize that what had happened in the community is the Assyrians had come down. They'd invaded the north, and they had taken the north captive and scattered them all over the place. But the Assyrians' next move was to come down into Judah.

30. 8:42

    And something happened at that point. There's prophecies in our Bible about how God was going to destroy Judah right then. He intended to. You can see it in Amos, that that was the intent, that Judah would be next. And so the Assyrian king comes on down. And all of a sudden, Hezekiah does a 180-degree turn and changes and becomes a spiritual man.

31. 9:04

    And you'll see that. And it's actually referred to in the book of Jeremiah. That this is actually what happened. And that some of the prophets came in, of all things you'd never expect. Micah? Micah came in and turned Hezekiah around. And it actually is referred to in the book of Jeremiah. So you'll see when you go look at that, that this is what had happened.

32. 9:23

    So Hezekiah responded to Micah's warnings. And he dumped all the idols at that point into the rivers and cleaned up the high places. And he dumped all this stuff. And he thought he was cleaning up the land. And there was this major renovation at the time. You know, and a restoration of spiritual life in the kingdom.

33. 9:40

    You know, they cleaned out the temple. And everything was looking good. Even though the northern kingdom had been taken captive. But then after Hezekiah, Manasseh comes in for all those rotten years. 55 years, of which most of those were bad. And all Manasseh did was go down to the rivers. And he went down to the dump.

34. 9:58

    And he pulled the idols back out again and set them back up. And the people went right back to idolatry. One of the worst kings that Judah had ever had. But it's interesting that at the end of his life, Manasseh repents. He actually does a turnaround at the end. And you start to realize that after all those years went by, what's he going to do?

35. 10:17

    You wait that long and you try to change your family after all those years. You've misled them. And Ammon couldn't turn it around. There's no way his son was going to recover from where he had been going. And he was just like Hezekiah in his former days. And I do think that is a good lesson for all of us.

36. 10:33

    Because as we get older in the truth and you realize it, you keep thinking sometimes, well, I'll put off my real spiritual development. I'll wait till later on. I'll wait till later on. And then when the time gets right or when I retire or whatever, then I'm really going to, I'll do it then.

37. 10:46

    And unfortunately, we lose our impact on our children if we wait so long. And you see that happening with Manasseh. He did turn around eventually, but he couldn't change Ammon. But the good news is for grandparents that I think you see right here a good example of a king who had a good impact on his grandson.

38. 11:05

    And I'll bet Hezekiah, or in this case Manasseh, he couldn't turn around his own son, but he worked on his grandson. And you look at Josiah and wonder, like, what happened? How in the world did Josiah come out of all of this at that time? And it wouldn't surprise me at all because I think Josiah is about five or six years old when Manasseh finally is off the scene, or when he was born at least.

39. 11:29

    He would have been up to five or six when Manasseh dies. And so it's possible that in those last few years that Manasseh actually had quite an impact on Josiah. So those are the three kings that predate Josiah right before Jeremiah comes on the scene. And then we have all the JJJJZs, you know, for all of the Canadians that works out real good.

40. 11:50

    The Americans are still wondering what the Zs are, but that's okay. It's always good for Canada. You can easily remember the last king, right? It's just like the last letter of your alphabet, and it just works out so well. So we've got all the JJJ guys, and they're easy to remember because they go, you know, when you look at the reign, you've got Josiah that's 31 years.

41. 12:08

    But then after him, you've got three months, 11 years, three months, 11 years. So that's nice. That helps in terms of patterns for remembering the fellas. But those are the kings that we're going to look at during the time period of Jeremiah this weekend. So if you can keep those in mind, if you've got the Josiah straight and Jehoahaz and all of those, that's good.

42. 12:29

    If you're wondering how they all fit together in the family, this is always nice to see how the family works. This was Josiah's family. You know, good old King Josiah who pulls off his reformation. He ends up having four boys that we're told in the Bible, at least. He has Johanan here, that nothing is recorded about him.

43. 12:47

    Other than that, he's the first son listed. So he probably died early in life. And then you have Eliakim, who we know as Jehoiakim. And then Shalom, or Jehoahaz, as he's called by most of us. And then there's Zedekiah down here. It's interesting because when you look at that, three of his sons reigned as kings.

44. 13:06

    Now, do you remember who took over after Josiah? Who did the people of the land pick as their next king when they had a choice? They didn't pick Johanan. They didn't pick Jehoiakim either. The people of the land, they picked Jehoahaz. Because they realized that this fella here was actually better than King Jehoiakim.

45. 13:30

    So the next guy would have been Jehoahaz. He's the next one to reign. But he only reigns for three months. And you remember what happened with him? The people of the land picked him because they probably thought he was a better fella than his older brother, as we'll see when he takes over.

46. 13:43

    But Pharaoh Necho had just come down from up at the Battle of Kharkimish. He had just defeated Josiah at that point, gone up to the battle. And he comes back down and he takes Jehoiakim with him. And he takes him on down to Egypt. And so that's why he only reigned for three months.

47. 13:58

    And who did he set up as king? Right? The next guy? The next one he sets up would have been Jehoiakim right there. Now in Jeremiah's prophecies, it's interesting that Jeremiah actually refers to this fellow right here, Jehoahaz, because after he got carried down to Egypt at that time, when the Egyptian pharaoh took him down, Jeremiah actually gives a prophecy about that exact incident, because the people were sad that their king had gone, the one they picked, and now they had to live with Jehoiakim.

48. 14:24

    So he says in Jeremiah 22 to weep not for the dead, nor bemoan him, but weep bitterly for him who goes away. Now who would the dead be? Who's the dead? Well, the dead is Josiah, because he had just been killed. And the people liked Josiah. And weep nor bemoan him, but weep bitterly for him who goes away.

49. 14:45

    The one who goes away right here is Jehoahaz. He's on his way down to Egypt. Now look, interesting things come out of Jeremiah's prophecies that sometimes we read over and we don't even realize them. Look what he says there. For he shall return no more, nor see his native country. Now when you really press that, I think it's fun to look at the hope that these people had.

50. 15:07

    If you can say to not weep for the dead, this guy here who's dead, don't weep for him, but weep for this guy who's still alive because he's never going to come back to his native country, what does that tell you about Josiah? If you think about it, the prophets are telling us Josiah had a hope.

51. 15:23

    He was going to come back. Don't cry for Josiah. He's going to be resurrected. He's going to be in God's kingdom. And he's going to live again. I think it's fun to look at those kind of concepts, first principles that actually pop out in Jeremiah's prophecies if you carefully read through them and try to fit the context together.

52. 15:40

    For thus says the Lord concerning Shalem, the son of Josiah, and then Shalem would be this Jehoahaz fellow. He sometimes, he was called Shalem probably at first, who reigned instead of his father Josiah, who went from this place. He shall not return here anymore. So the Jews lost Jehoahaz at that point. He goes on down to Egypt and Jehoiakim then takes over as the next king.

53. 16:02

    So he's our next one. Now, do you remember what kind of king Jehoiakim was? He reigns 11 years. What was he like? What was Jehoiakim like? Ooh, what do you know about Jehoiakim? Well, he was probably one of the most rotten kings of Judah they ever had. Abused the people, took advantage of the situation.

54. 16:18

    Terrible. So Pharaoh Necho puts him in power probably because he realizes that, I don't have to leave Jehoahaz there. The people like him too much. We'll put this guy in charge who's going to like, well, he'll just take advantage of the people. He'll do whatever I tell him and he'll follow what I say.

55. 16:34

    So Jehoiakim ends up being the next. And Jeremiah is giving prophecies during this time period of the king Jehoiakim right here. He'll tell you things about him. In fact, in Jeremiah 22, that little chapter there, actually Jeremiah 22 is an interesting one because it refers to Josiah and Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin.

56. 16:50

    They're all there. All these kings in one chapter just thrown together. So Jeremiah says about him, Thus does the Lord concerning Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah. They shall not lament for him, saying, Alas, my brother, or alas, my sister. Nobody cared about him at all because they hated him. Instead, what ends up happening is that he will be buried with the burial of a donkey, dragged and cast beyond the gates of Jerusalem.

57. 17:15

    They basically threw him out over the wall, dragged him out of the city, and he didn't even get a king's burial. So then you try to figure out, well, why did that happen? What was going on at that period that a king wouldn't even get a king's burial? He's just like, get him out of the city and dump him out there.

58. 17:29

    In fact, one of the other prophecies says he's just going to lay there on the ground and suffer the cold by night and the heat by day because something drastic had happened at the end of his life, and the people were locked up within the city at that point. There was a siege going on, and he just gets tossed out of the city.

59. 17:45

    So that was the prediction about King Jehoiakim. So after Jehoiakim, well, who's next? Well, his son reigns next, Jehoiachin. He's the next one to come along. So, yeah, Jehoiachin doesn't last very long. He only reigns for a few years. He comes in, and he ends up surrendering to the king of Babylon. You may remember the story.

60. 18:05

    When the king of Babylon showed up, the king of Babylon, it says of Jehoiakim that his mother, his servants, his princes, his officers went out to the king of Babylon, and the king of Babylon, in the eighth year of his reign, took him prisoner. Now, he went out to the king of Babylon.

61. 18:22

    See, when the siege happened, and this occurred with him, and he became the next king after his dad got thrown out of the city, he didn't stay and fight. He gave up, surrendered to the king of Babylon. Who told him to do that? Jeremiah. That was Jeremiah's message, his surrender. And it was treason back then.

62. 18:45

    Jehoiakim would have never done that. But his son, Jehoiakim, and his mom, and all of these people with him, they all surrendered to the king of Babylon. They got taken up to Babylon. And we end up thinking, well, that's the end of them. But he actually gets rewarded because Jeremiah was telling the people, if you surrender, I promise you, you'll get your life.

63. 19:04

    And he did. He got his life. In fact, he not only got his life, but you know in Jeremiah 52, it actually refers to the fact that later on, he gets taken out of prison by evil Morodic. He's lifted up so that he's brought out of prison. And evil Morodic speaks kindly to him.

64. 19:21

    He lets him dine with him. He changes prison garments. And he ate bread regularly before the king all the days of his life. That's really interesting because this is what Jeremiah had said. If you surrender, then you will get your life. And he's a great case of an example to the people of somebody who actually did what Jeremiah had said.

65. 19:43

    So that's King Jehoiachin. But he only reigns for three months, and then he's gone. And then you get left with Zedekiah. So Zedekiah is our last fellow on the line. And that's the end. So Zedekiah, unfortunately, he's interested, but he just doesn't have any backbone. And you'll see that as you're going through Jeremiah's prophecies.

66. 20:01

    Now, if you were going down the line after Zedekiah, they go up to the captivity. Who's next? Aha. See, when you look down the line, it's really interesting to follow it through that when you go on down, there's Zerubbabel right there. Zerubbabel was actually in the line of the kings. And when they came back from the captivity, if they were allowed to have a king, Zerubbabel would have been that king.

67. 20:23

    It's also interesting to note, in terms of Matthew 1 and Luke 3, I don't know whether you've ever noticed, but you know whose name shows up in both? When you look at the genealogies, Zerubbabel. So no matter which line you take, Zerubbabel is the key. So somehow the line went through there. And if you ever study that whole incident with Zerubbabel, the son of Sheltiel, how in the world is he Sheltiel's son when he's listed also in the genealogies and the chronicles as Petitia's son?

68. 20:47

    A lot of people think that there was probably one of those Leverite marriages at that time, and one of the brothers raised up offspring for his brother. And that that's what happened with Zerubbabel. But he is in both accounts. So no matter which way you take it, Zerubbabel was the next in line.

69. 21:03

    Now for major events in Jeremiah's lifetime, I made this chart years ago and I was just trying to sort out what was going on. I probably should have copied it for you all, but if you ever get the PowerPoints and you have a look at it, you'll see that it actually helps in terms of like trying to figure out what in the world is going on in Jeremiah's lifetime.

70. 21:19

    I just went through the chapters of Jeremiah and then tried to piece together where do these events take place? Because so much of Jeremiah is out of order. So when you start out, Jeremiah began prophesying in the 13th year right here. This is when he began prophesying. Josiah began prophesying in his 12th year.

71. 21:36

    Jeremiah starts prophesying in the next year. Now when you read about Josiah's reformation, when Josiah went about and did all those reformations and you're reading the Kings and the Chronicles and you see all those wonderful things that Josiah did, what would you think the community was like when you're reading the Kings and the Chronicles?

72. 21:52

    You read that record of Josiah's reformation and you think, wow, things are really going good. And then you read Jeremiah and you find out, whoa, wasn't near as good as I thought it was. Because in the Kings and the Chronicles, they tell you a superficial observation of what was happening in the kingdom from the king down.

73. 22:13

    What Jeremiah tells us is God says, yeah, that's what's going on with the kingdom, but here's what the people are really doing, Jeremiah. And this is where the conflict arises. Jeremiah's caught up in the spirit of Josiah's reformation and God's trying to explain to Jeremiah that you think that these people are doing, you have no idea what they do when they go home.

74. 22:33

    They come to meeting, they look good, they all pay attention. It's like coming to a study day. Everybody's got their Bibles out. They're all like taking notes and they're all really interested. They do the sacrifices and then they go home and you can't believe, Jeremiah, what goes on at home. And that's Jeremiah's warning.

75. 22:48

    And he can't believe it either. It takes God 20 chapters to convince him that this is as bad as things are and the community is done. That's Jeremiah's message. And if you don't notice that as you're going through, you don't even realize why those first 20 chapters are there. But it takes God 20 chapters to convince Jeremiah that this is what it is.

76. 23:07

    And so he's prophesying in this first, when you look at Jeremiah's prophecies, you look at the first 13 chapters or so are pretty well all in the time of Josiah, the first 13 chapters. And then you get into the time of Jehoiakim right in here and you'll find that the next bunch go through that period right there.

77. 23:23

    Probably chapters 14 to 20 of Jeremiah are somewhere at the end of Jehoiakim's lifetime. It makes reference to the drought that was coming and the siege that was going to be there. You can see that what was going to happen at the end of Jehoiakim. Now, you'll notice that as you go through this, when you look at the series of events, that a lot of the chump chapters are clumped.

78. 23:42

    You'll see like there's a chump, clunk of chapters right here. There's another clump right here. You get 25, 6, 35, 36. They're all like right in this period here. Then there's another chunk down here. And these little asterisks right here that you can see where the clumps are, those are when the evasions took place, when the Babylonians would come in, when the Egyptians would come in.

79. 24:02

    So Jeremiah's prophecies became very intense around an invasion. And that's why you start looking for things in terms of the historical period and connect them with the invasions. And then you can see what's actually going on. You may see a little clump down in here as well because there's eruptions to this event right here.

80. 24:19

    Zedekiah held a conference at this period. So you get up around his fourth or fifth year and Zedekiah decided, he got all these people in from the nations all around and he decided, what do you think? What do you think? Should we rebel? And he gets all these people together. And remember when Jeremiah has to put the yokes on and sends the yokes out to all the other kings?

81. 24:37

    This was a response to, this was God's response to Zedekiah's attempt to have a rebellion. And that's when Zedekiah gets called up to Babylon at that time and all these different events take place. So you'll see a little bit of this as you go through and you'll pick it up as we go through Jeremiah.

82. 24:53

    So a lot of the chapters are out of chronological order. That's another thing you'll notice about Jeremiah's prophecies. They're really not in order. And the best suggestion that I ever heard to that was out of Cook's commentary. And it really made a lot of sense to me that when you read through the first 20 chapters, they're pretty well in chronological order.

83. 25:09

    But then things change. And we think that what ended up happening is that Jeremiah took his prophecies and he grabbed things that he had already written that had come to pass and he rearranges them and presents them to the next king and says, look it, I warned Jehoiakim. I said this is what was going to happen and it happened.

84. 25:31

    And now it's your turn, Zedekiah. What are you going to do about it? And so this is what Jeremiah attempted to do. He did the same thing with Josiah. He took chapters and prophecies about Josiah and about his son and about Jehoiakim in his earlier days and he clumps them all together right here and he presents them to the king at the end of his days and said, look it, there's going to be an invasion.

85. 25:52

    How are you going to respond? What are you going to do? Are you going to listen this time and give in and do what you should do and surrender? Or are you just going to hold out? And it appears as though that was what Jeremiah attempted to do, which is why the chapters are out of order chronologically.

86. 26:08

    But they're in a very good order thematically when you read them that way. The attempt was to convince the king that here's what God said back there in each of these kings. That's why Jeremiah 22, when you look at it, you wonder like, why are all those kings mentioned there? Well, he tries to record all these different events and then present them to Zedekiah and say, look at Zedekiah.

87. 26:27

    I said all these different things. Look at what has happened. Don't you believe me now? And it was an attempt to try to force Zedekiah to make some changes at the end of his life. But so that's possibly what ends up happening. And really the last time he would have reordered them would have been for Zedekiah because Zedekiah is at the end.

88. 26:44

    So Jeremiah attempts to, probably with Barak, put them together in such a way that it'll put pressure on Zedekiah to respond. Get him off of his fence standing position because Zedekiah was like that. He'd go listen to his princes. What do you have to say? And then he'd go to Jeremiah and say, oh, what's the word of the Lord today?

89. 27:00

    And he'd sit on the fence. He wouldn't do anything about it. And Jeremiah's attempting to pressure him to respond. So I think you'll see that as you go along. It's fun to look at it in terms of the big picture sometimes and stand back and look at what was God doing with the captivity at this point in time right now.

90. 27:17

    And what you discover is that Jeremiah's down here in Jerusalem and he's trying to tell the Jews at this point to change their ways and surrender to Babylon. This is what he would be saying like through most of the later chapters of Jeremiah. And he tells the nations, because if you notice in the reading this morning, I don't know whether you ever noticed that, but I found it was really interesting that Jeremiah was told from the beginning that he would be a prophet to the nations.

91. 27:41

    Not to Judah, not to Israel, but to the nations. God had a message that he wanted to go out to the nations and Jeremiah was going to deliver that message. So his prophecies aren't just for Judah and they're not just for Israel. They'd already been taken captive. His prophecies were really designed to convince the nations about something.

92. 28:02

    And you'll see that a bit as you go along, that God cared that the nations got the message. You'll see that up in Babylon, that Daniel's working with Nebuchadnezzar, right? And what's he trying to impress Nebuchadnezzar with? Here, Nebuchadnezzar had come in, had taken the Jews captive, taken them up to Babylon, and thought that Bel had triumphed over Yahweh.

93. 28:24

    And so all those things that happened in the early chapters of Daniel make sense now. What is the main theme that God is trying to get Nebuchadnezzar to learn? That the Most High rules in the kingdom of men and he gives it to whoever he wills. And this was a message to the nations.

94. 28:44

    Your gods didn't beat Yahweh. No way! Yahweh took his own people captive. He's the one who's in control. And Daniel's up there in Babylon trying to convince the king. Jeremiah's going to be down in the south delivering the same message to the nations that Yahweh's in control. He's the one who's doing this and he's going to wipe out his people.

95. 29:05

    He's going to take his nation captive and he's going to destroy his city and his house in Jerusalem. That was the main thing that God was very concerned about. He didn't want the nations thinking their gods had triumphed over him. And so Ezekiel's up there in the land. He's up there with the captives at this point.

96. 29:22

    And he's trying to convince the captives why God is doing this. He's trying to explain to them how bad things are back in the land. And so Ezekiel's always seeing visions about what's happening down in Jerusalem so that the people that are up with Ezekiel will realize why God had to do this.

97. 29:37

    He didn't have a choice. He wanted to save his community. He wanted to have a next generation of Christadelphians. And the only way he could do that was by taking them out of Jerusalem and regrowing the community up in Babylon. And then he'll send them back when he's cleaned up the community and he's changed the land.

98. 29:55

    So it's nice to see that sort of cooperation that's going on between the prophets and see how the two, especially that Daniel and Jeremiah, are trying to get the same message out to the nations that the Most High rules in the kingdoms of men. Now, when you look at Josiah's reformation back in 2 Kings and Chronicles, I know you're familiar with that, so I didn't read it this morning, but you know what happens.

99. 30:16

    He's 8 years old. He comes and takes over as king. He reigns for 31 years. In his 8th year, he began to seek God. In his 8th year. Well, you're going to find out that's because of Micah. Micah just walks in in front of all the princes in Zedekiah and he just looks at him and he says, because of you, Jerusalem's going to be plowed as a field.

100. 30:35

     And all of a sudden, Hezekiah responds when the fingers pointed at him. It's the end of Micah's prophecy. It's the end of chapter 3, I think, where it pops up. And they actually refer to that specific incident in Jeremiah's prophecies. And that totally changed Hezekiah. In his 8th year, he began to seek God.

101. 30:54

     And he turned everything around. He started a reformation. In his 12th year, he began to purge Judah of their idols. And he went north and he even tried to go up into the northern kingdom and change the people up in there. But it was a confusing time for the community. They just had a lot of idolatry that they had to change at this point.

102. 31:12

     Manasseh had been running rampant through the community and then Ammon for like almost 60 years. And so the people had had all this idolatrous worship that had to be knocked out of them. You find out in Josiah's 18th year that he finally repairs the temple and finds the book of the law, removes the covenant, gets rid of the idolatrous priests.

103. 31:31

     That's not until his 18th year. And he finally holds a Passover and he restores the temple worship. And if you were living through that like Jeremiah, you would think that things are looking up. The community is doing pretty good. And you know, this is great. This is so much better than years ago.

104. 31:49

     And you look back and think of the bad old days and you say, wow, Josiah, things are on the roll. We're doing great. You know, God's really working with the community. Thank God for what's happening. And then Jeremiah gets told, let's tell them what's really happening. And you read that in Jeremiah's prophecies.

105. 32:05

     And you find out that the Kings and the Chronicles record doesn't tell you what was really happening. It tells you what was happening from Josiah's perspective, but not what was going on in the community. So that's the sad thing that comes out in Jeremiah. So for example, you open up your Bible and you look in Jeremiah chapter 3 and you find out in Jeremiah chapter 3, and this is when he's talking really about Israel, but he also mentions the treacherous sister Judah.

106. 32:30

     So Jeremiah 3 at verse 10, for all the things that had happened. So he says, look at Jeremiah, for all the things that I did to the northern kingdom, taking them captive and all these warnings that they had and all these events that went on and all the things that had happened up there, the disasters that had happened.

107. 32:45

     Yet for all of this, her treacherous sister Judah has not turned to me. This is during Josiah's reformation with her whole heart, but in pretense. Oh, it looked good on the surface. Sure, everybody went to meeting. They showed up to the temple. They offered their sacrifices. They looked like good Christadelphians, but when they went home, nope, everything else fell apart.

108. 33:08

     They did what they wanted to do. They didn't treat each other with kindness. They abused the people. They yelled at each other. They lied. They cheated. They stole. They did all kinds of things, and God says, what do you expect me to do? You think I'm going to save this community when this is how they act?

109. 33:22

     They just come to meeting and think they show up with their sacrifices, and they say, oh, yes, and now we're forgiven and we're all set with God. And it's sad, but this is what was going on in this community. And God says, look at for all the warnings I gave Judah. They saw what happened up in the north.

110. 33:38

     They realized how close it came when the Assyrians came down and Hezekiah turned it around. They still haven't turned to me with their whole heart, but just in pretense. So backsliding Israel has shown herself more righteous than treacherous Judah. It was a repentance and pretense only. Jeremiah 4, next chapter. Here we go again.

111. 33:58

     For thus says the Lord in verse 3, break up your fallow ground and do not sow among thorns. Circumcise yourselves to the Lord and take away the foreskins of your hearts, you men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Lest my fury come forth like fire and burn so no one can quench it because of the evil of your doings.

112. 34:17

     And what they had, brethren and sisters and young people, was a ceremonial worship. They had a great system set up where you show up to meeting once in a while and then the rest of your time is yours. What do you do with all the different things they had been offered for 60 years of idolatry and they just couldn't get out of it.

113. 34:35

     You find Ezekiel says that they had their idols in their hearts and God had tried to knock them out with Josiah. Josiah didn't just throw the idols in the rivers. He crushed them and he got rid of their idols. But Ezekiel says the problem is the way of life is still in their hearts.

114. 34:51

     It's in their minds. This is what they really wanted. It was just a formal religion of outward show. So there it is. It's Ezekiel 14 if you want that reference that these men have set up their idols in their hearts and put before them that which causes them to stumble into iniquity. Should I myself be inquired at all by them?

115. 35:08

     You really think I'm going to listen to them when this is what they're really doing in their homes? And this is what really goes on when they leave meeting. They've really got all these idols set up. And so he takes them up to Babylon and attempts to knock it out of them. So when you look at what happened with the Jewish religion it had just become a formal legalistic religion.

116. 35:26

     And I'll tell you that's one of the major lessons I think you find out of Jeremiah is don't ever let our community go this route. You can't let your religion become something you do when you come here to this study day or when you go to meeting tomorrow or when you go to Bible class during the midweek and the rest of the time you're a different person.

117. 35:43

     That isn't how it works with God. God's changing us into the image of his son and it's 24-7-365. There are no breaks from this. This is the commitment he's looking for. He's not going to hand out immortality to people who just do it on weekends or they happen to do it at convenient times.

118. 36:00

     He's looking for members of his family who love his way of life and they bought into it and this is the way they want to live. So you find in Jeremiah 3 to say no more the Ark of the Covenant. Forget your Ark of the Covenant. You've got that formal stuff and you think that's going to save you?

119. 36:14

     Forget it. Don't say the Ark of the Covenant anymore but get a covenant in here written in your hearts. That's what God was after. He says in chapter 6 verse 20 that their offerings were not sincere. They just came in they did their offerings and thought the offering would save them very much like the churches today and we don't want to follow that pattern.

120. 36:34

     And in chapter 7 he says I didn't want sacrifices. He goes back through the whole period of all this history of Israel and he said look at all these animals that were brought to me for all of those years. I didn't really want sacrifices. What I really wanted was obedience. I thought the sacrifices would work.

121. 36:53

     I thought if you brought an animal up to the priest and you laid your hands on the head of the animal and you realized the animal represented Jesus Christ and that he was the perfect lamb of God fought sin didn't get into it without blemish and you identified yourself with him and you killed that animal and realized you were dying with Messiah to sin I thought that would change your life and bring about obedience and instead you just thought oh the animal he's going to die instead of me so I'm free and I can go and do what I want and you missed the point you missed it all because you never bought into the game plan you just went through the ritualism the formalism and missed the point of all those sacrifices I wanted obedience I wanted you to learn mercy to be kind to other people that if you were being forgiven of your sins of course you'd walk away and forgive all your brothers and sisters of theirs if that really meant anything to you that's what he was after a religion that hit the heart so God says look at your religion just formal just legal it hasn't done anything to change your way of life look at how the Jews had trusted in circumcision we looked at chapter 4 and 4 where they circumcised the foreskin of your hearts comes up again in chapter 6 he says their ear is uncircumcised because they really couldn't hear the word of the Lord well they listened to it but it didn't process it and mean anything to them they just interpreted it

122. 38:11

     in a formal way without really meditating on what does it really mean that would be like doing the Bible readings at home so that you can check off a list and say oh I did my readings but you go away after 5 minutes and can't even remember what you read that's a formal religion that's checklists that's legalism that's Judaism but God intended we would read those things so we would think about them we'd meditate on them and we'd think as we're reading what does this mean to me how am I supposed to change how does this impact the way I'm going to treat my wife my kids my parents my ecclesia this is what he wants he wants someone whose hearts are circumcised but the Jews just went ahead and did it in pretense at this time it's a very sad time and it all comes up in Jeremiah's prophecies when you look at Jeremiah himself the man he's probably born about the same time as Josiah that's the best anybody can figure out in terms of like looking at his lifespan and he probably would have got really excited at Josiah's reformation if we had lived back then and you cared you would too you'd think that oh this is great everybody's on board we got an ecclesial project going on and everybody's on board with this what happened with Jeremiah is he originally he had come from Anathoth and he trained to be a priest so all of his upbringing had been training to be one of these priests somebody who would work in the temple area and he'd work with the people

123. 39:31

     and he'd talk to them and he'd be supported by them because the priests were supposed to be supported by the people and now all of a sudden God says you're going to be a prophet and he changes his direction those priests they started out usually at about 25 years old that's where they would have gone and they've gone and we know that Jeremiah prophesied when he did change to be a prophet he ended up going for about 40 years he's one of the longest prophets that we have on record it's a long book and it tells you over a long period of time we know he continued his mission until he was about 65 years old so when you see pictures of Jeremiah down in the mire and you picture this man being dropped down there by Zedekiah just to sink into the mire and be left there to die you're looking at a 65 year old man down there and they didn't have all the health issues all the things that we have today to try to improve our health he probably was a worn out man at 65 years old at that point so much so that they ended up having to put the ropes in there in order to with the clothes to pull him out of there he couldn't even hold on when he finally got out what a great example this man is though of consistent persistence of trusting God's ways if you ever think your life is rough start reading Jeremiah and find out how rough our life really is this man what he was asked to do and what he went through

124. 40:48

     and how he just patiently consistently followed through sometimes he fought with God's plan but he did follow through on it and it's amazing when you look at what he was asked to endure in order for him to be a prophet to the community and to the nations he really does serve as a great example to all of us of faithful service when you figure out how he got you get the 40 years if you're ever wondering you start out in Josiah's 13th year so he actually prophesied for about 18 years during Josiah and then you have the 11 years the 11 years and so you're up at least at 40 years we know he went in through the time of Goliath and then when they went on down to Egypt so it was at least a 40 year period that Jeremiah is prophesying now when you look at the life of a priest the life of the priest if the people were actually doing what they were supposed to or even when they weren't if the priest made the people do things they would bring the priest food if you worked in the community you got to eat and so the priests were actually supported by the people they took care of you we look at Jeremiah when it says that he was called from birth in chapter 1 at verse 5 very much like Christ you can do a lot of lineups between Jeremiah and the Lord Jesus Christ in Isaiah 49 and also the Apostle Paul this is the kind of man that he was God had chosen him from birth as with a specific mission

125. 42:05

     of being a prophet to the nations he really didn't want to be a prophet you saw that in the readings in chapter 1 that isn't what he wanted to do he really had trained to be a priest and wanted to operate as a priest but God did promise that if he faithfully went through and spoke God's word he told him that he would take care of him that's really interesting when you look at how God promised to protect him in verses 18 and 19 of Jeremiah 1 he said there I'll make you a fortified city an iron pillar and bronze walls against the whole land now if you heard that if that's what you heard would you ever think that you're going to be brought up by the people and put in stocks and everybody's going to come by and laugh at you would you think that you're going to be dumped down into a pit of mire and left there to die when God just told you he's going to make you a fortified city an iron pillar and bronze walls against the whole land there's a lot of things that happened in Jeremiah's life that he looked back at this and thought wow I got fooled I didn't realize this is what you meant and you would too I mean this is just he's a human he's like us and he does feel that way he says he actually spills the beans and in Jeremiah 20 he lays it all out and says wow I was really fooled I didn't understand what I was getting into at all but God did take care of him

126. 43:20

     it just wasn't the way Jeremiah had expected he goes through all these different things or his own family turns on him as you're going through this but this is the kind of faithful service God is looking for and Jeremiah did in the end become a really faithful willing servant of God and he really does stand as a great example to all of us of consistently patiently persisting through what God brings into our families and our lives because God knows what he's doing and you find that in the story of Jeremiah this is a family chart on Jeremiah's life if you ever look in the back of Brother Harry Whitaker's book he has most of that in there I talked to Ron Cowie one time about it about what he thought we should put Shapin in there and he thought the same thing I did we included Shapin's family up there as well you can't really prove that but there's so many connections with Shapin's family that it really makes sense that the family of Shapin over here on the side Shapin's the son of Azaliah and that probably was the same Azaliah up there who's in the high priest family Hocaiah coming down from Tikpah up there at the top so that's really when you read in Jeremiah and you read about all these different characters they all show up in the story of Jeremiah you can see the references in here of all these different characters showing up in this story and there's Jeremiah right in here son of Hilkiah the high priest so you start looking at Jeremiah's family line and you realize

127. 44:36

     that alright there's Barak over there because we know he's connected somehow in the family there's Saria right here who would be Ezra's dad connected in here as being the son of Ezra's brother and the high priest family line went down this way and Jeremiah's over here training in Anathoth in the high priest family line that's where he grew up that's his background and so it wasn't too many years down where Ezra was actually born and Ezra was the priest that has the book named after him so that gives you some idea at least of the family the family connections with Jeremiah most of the family members on the left side rejected him Shapen's family is the only one that accepted him really to a great extent Barak did down there in the bottom and maybe Saria as well but a lot of them rejected Jeremiah and really didn't like what Jeremiah was doing they didn't buy into his prophecies so when you look at his family we've got Hilkiah was probably his dad Hilkiah the high priest was Jeremiah's dad he's raised in Anathoth right in there which wasn't too far from Jerusalem just a little bit north of Jerusalem that was the city of the priest Anathoth and so he trained up there with the priest some of Abiathar's descendants actually lived there as well up there in Anathothoth you can look at his life you find out he had easy access to the king you know that Jeremiah was given special treatment by rulers Jehoiakim you know would have put Uriah to death but he spared Jeremiah's life in the end there's a whole bunch

128. 45:57

     of things that happen that give you the feeling that Jeremiah was a little bit special in the community that God had put him into a special situation even Zedekiah later on when he lets Ebed-Milek pull him out of the pit Jeremiah was really given some special considerations that other people may not have you find out that the princes and the priests in chapter 36 they allowed the scroll to be read in the priest's chambers and before the king which not everybody could do but Jeremiah they allowed it to happen for him and finally in the end you realize that wow Daniel must have been up in Babylon talking to Nebuchadnezzar about Jeremiah so when Nebuchadnezzar comes down Jeremiah is just treated with high respect and the king Nebuchadnezzar walks in and says Jeremiah where do you want to go what do you want to do what a wonderful thing at that point for Jeremiah and you've got to believe that's God directed that's a result of Daniel working with King Nebuchadnezzar and actually pulled a lot of strings for Jeremiah down there and God really did take care of him but a lot of his family did reject him when you look at his family members Azariah and Gemariah his brother they both dealt treacherously with him it speaks of that chapter 12 Zedekiah's cousin prophesied lies in Jeremiah 29 Azariah who was his cousin he claimed that Jeremiah lied when he prophesied that God didn't want them to flee to Egypt and this is way at the end even his family still didn't accept what he was saying and Saria who would have been

129. 47:18

     Jeremiah's nephew who was a high priest and his cousin Zephaniah they probably and a lot of the other family members they ended up getting killed by Nebuchadnezzar because they were unfaithful and they got brought up to Riblah there and ended up being destroyed but Jeremiah was kept alive as God had said so that's pretty much what you end up with in the life of Jeremiah just as far as the first class goes just going to skip ahead and finish up a couple of things right there but what I wanted to do in the first class was just get that far pretty much and what we'll do in the second class is we'll look at what happened with the people why did they fail I think it's good for us to realize that today that when you start to look at what happened and you realize it looks so good in the Kings and the Chronicles and you read Jeremiah and you find out it was all falling apart what happened that caused the people to fail so that we can learn not to follow those same steps and those same pathways and we can learn from the time of Jeremiah to try to be a more faithful community at the time of the end because we're certainly living in a time period very much like his so we'll leave it there for now and pick up the failure of the people in chapter in class two thanks