We are about to read:
(By the way…if you are behind…you really can jump in here, you won’t be lost. We have been reading 300 years of the same “message”)-Turn or Burn…Get Right or you will be Left….(I crack myself up!)
We are at the edge of the Babylonian Captivity YIKES!!. Until now the prophets have spoken that one day it will happen. WELL, Jeremiah “the weeping prophet” is going to bring a message to the people that it will happen now. We will see it through his eyes: from an “outsider’s perspective”. He does not go with them into captivity.
- THEN we will be with Daniel when the first captives are taken into exile.
- THEN the final wave of captives will be taken and we will experience that through Ezekiel.
Jeremiah is a book not written in chronological order. Try to imagine it this way, he had this huge scroll and after years and years of preaching his messages he would sporadically write them down, not in order, just as they came back to him (I think of him as my ADHD prophet)😝. He then had a scribe, Baruch, write them into a book. It can, however, be divided into 4 sections:
- The call of the prophet Jeremiah (Chapter 1)
- The Prophecies of Judah (Chapters 2-45)
- The Prophecies to the Gentiles (Chapters 46-51)
- The Fall of Jerusalem (Chapter 52)
Jeremiah lived about 100 years after Isaiah preached. Jeremiah was called to be a prophet in 626 BC. Let me start with the international situation of the day.
- The three world powers: Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt. (you knew that)
- For 300 years Assyria (Ninevah is the capital), ruled the world. But as predicted, the country is weakening and Babylon is becoming more powerful.
- Egypt was the world power before the Exodus and they want it again!
- About the midpoint in Jeremiah’s life Babylon wins, defeating Assyria (about 610 B.C.) and 4 years later beats Egypt (Battle of Carchemish).
For 70 years Babylonia will rule the world, while the Jewish people are in the Babylonian captivity.
Look at this crazy good visual…and smile because it is not clear as mud anymore to see something like this! I LOVE this visual so if you want to print it click here.
Jeremiah was born into the priesthood, his father may have been Hilkiah the priest, who brought the book of the law to king Josiah, which started the great reform. So we can assume that Jeremiah was religious, but God also had plans for him. He called him to be a prophet during the most trying times of the Jewish people. But God has a plan for all of us and sometimes it is the last thing we want to do.
He was called to be a prophet in the 13th year of Josiah’s reign. Jeremiah’s reign was never a popular one, like most of God’s men, he was beaten for it. He is called the “weeping prophet” for his sympathy and concern for the people of Judah for their rebellious and imminent doom. We will hear his lament in the book of Lamentations.
This book is impossible to read chronologically, the end is in the beginning and the beginning in the end. Jeremiah will use props to engage the people to bring a teachable sermon, for example, an almond rod, a boiling cauldron, a marred girdle, a full bottle, a drought, a potters vessel, a broken bottle, 2 baskets of figs, bands and bars, a field, hidden stones, and a book. Also, to get people to understand who the coming Messiah is to the world, Jeremiah will refer to him as a Fountain of Living Water, a Great Physician, a Good Shepard, a Righteous Branch, a King, the Redeemer, and The Lord our Righteousness. ❤
Jeremiah was preaching during all this for 40 years and surely had contemporaries ready to follow in his footsteps. Ezekiel was about 18 yrs old when Nebuchadnezzar took the first group of captives. Among that group was a familiar name, Daniel. Daniel was exiled at the age of 15 (with his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah), while his friend Ezekiel was left behind. During this time Jeremiah was bringing the message to the people to repent…but they did not.😢
Reading the Bible - 2021 