Recap

So far in Jeremiah we’ve looked at Jeremiah’s calling and accusations against Judah. The book of Jeremiah is a collection of messages and poems by the prophet Jeremiah, who was a prophet to Judah immediately before their exile. We read as God called Jeremiah to be his mouth pieces to Judah to weed out corruption and idolatry in Judah. The people would not listen to him, but his teachings would serve as a foundation for the people after they’d been exiled.

Jeremiah then started off focus on the people’s relationship with God. God had been the one who led them out of Egypt, but they quickly forgot that. The Israelites instead chose to worship other gods, essentially committing adultery against God. The same thing happened when the nation split into the two kingdoms; Israel in the north and Judah in the south. God pointed out that Deuteronomy made it clear if a man divorces his wife and she goes off with another man, she can’t then return to her first husband. In the same way, God couldn't take Israel back after all they had done.

We read as Jeremiah tried to lead the people to repentance, but they would not listen. He grieved the destruction he knew was coming to Judah, likening it to decreation. Returning the land to its state before God created it. Again, Jeremiah called the people to repent, but God tells Jeremiah not to pray for them. Their opportunity to change has gone. The era of wise men is gone. It's time for the women who mourn to lead.

We saw the first few cracks for Jeremiah. He was being persecuted and sometimes it looked like wicked people are flourishing. God encouraged Jeremiah that punishment was coming. We read as Jeremiah wrestled with his job. He tried to intercede for the people again, but God told him not to. Instead, Jeremiah has to settle with being hated and mocked by the people.

As Babylon came and started taking some people into exile, God warned them that they would be in exile for seventy years. Then he would punish Babylon for its wickedness along with the other nations.

Then came messages of hope. God will reunite and restore the nation of Israel. They will rejoice and flourish in their land again. God will make a new covenant with them that he will write on their hearts. As a sign of this hope, God got Jeremiah to buy some land and then to bury the deeds for the land in a jar so that the generation that comes out of exile can dig it up. Yes, things are hard now, but God will bring life where there was death.

But for now, the people were digging their own graves. They set their slaves free, only to re-enslave them again. We had the example of the Rechabites who held on to commandments passed down their family, while the Israelites couldn't hold on to commandments given directly by God. King Jehoiakim would rather throw Jeremiah’s teachings into the fire and see him dead than listen to them.

Jeremiah 37-39

So far in Jeremiah, we've done a lot of jumping back and forth in time, which has been confusing at times. Today's reading unpacks for us how Jeremiah ended up imprisoned under king Zedekiah. King Zedekiah and his people refused to listen to God's law.

For a time, Babylon had been sieging Jerusalem to destroy it. But then Egypt came up, and so Babylon (also known as the Chaldeans) retreated to fight them instead. This was all before Jeremiah was put in prison.

So Jeremiah goes up to king Zedekiah to let him know that while the Babylonians have left for now, they will be back and they will burn the city down. It then says that Jeremiah went down to "to the land of Benjamin to receive his portion there among the people" (Jeremiah 37:12). This may have been his initial attempt to buy a field of his cousin that we read about in Jeremiah 32.

On his way, some local guard officials assumed that he was fleeing the country to go side with the Babylonians and so beat him and arrested him. King Zedekiah then called him back to Jerusalem to ask if God had a more recent word for them. Jeremiah repeated the message before saying that Jerusalem will be given over to the Babylonians. He then asks why he was arrested, and begged not to be sent back to the men who had imprisoned him, so Zedekiah kept him under arrest in Jerusalem instead.

Some men that had heard what Jeremiah had been saying about the destruction of Jerusalem, and hated him for it, came to Zedekiah. They tried to persuade him to kill Jeremiah, claiming that he was only seeking to harm the people. Zedekiah chose the passive route out. He didn't agree with the men, but he didn't try to stop them. They took Jeremiah and threw him in a cistern full of mud so that he would starve.

An Ethiopian man, called Ebed-melech, found out about what happened and appealed to Zedekiah to rescue Jeremiah. Once again, a foreigner is more aligned with the God of Israel than God’s own people. Zedekiah gave Ebed-melech thirty men who, using some old clothes tied together, pulled Jeremiah out of the cistern. Jeremiah was then put back under guard in Jerusalem.

Zedekiah called Jeremiah to once again ask him what the future would hold. Jeremiah tells Zedekiah that if he surrenders and gives himself up to the Babylonians when they come, both he and the city will be spared. But if Zedekiah does not surrender, then he and his family will be given other the Babylonians and the city will be destroyed.

Zedekiah then Jeremiah to tell no one about this conversation, for they will try to kill him if they knew Jeremiah was still talking about Jerusalem's destruction. If they asked Jeremiah should say that their conversation was only about not sending him back to the house of Jonathon where he had been arrested before.

And so the Babylonians came and laid siege against Jerusalem. But Zedekiah didn't surrender. Eventually, the Babylonians broke through the walls, and Zedekiah tried to flee with his officials. The Babylonians captured them all, killed Zedekiah's family, poked out his eyes, and then took all the people living in Jerusalem into captivity.

Only a few people were left in all of Judah. The king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, heard about Jeremiah and put him in the trust of one of his officials. This official dealt well with him and let him go back to his family's land. Jumping briefly back before the Babylonians attacked, God spoke to Jeremiah to let him know that the Ethiopian man who rescued him, Ebed-melech, would be protected and blessed.

Psalm 21

This psalm is attributed to king David and falls into the category of a royal psalm. Royal psalms are psalms that are focused on either God as a king or on a human king. But this isn’t just a royal psalm. The first half is very much a praise psalm for all of God’s blessings, and the second half is a trust psalm, declaring the confidence that God will defeat his enemies.

Really, the main thing that makes this a royal psalm is the fact it is written from the perspective of a king, likely David, though in the third person.

a) Psalm 21:1 - The king exults God

b) Psalm 21:2-7 - God blesses the king

b) Psalm 21:8-12 - God curses his enemies

a) Psalm 21:13 - The king exults God

The king opens by giving all glory to God. Everything he has comes from God. It is God who has given him his desires, and blessing him with the position. It is God that has given him his life and victory. No king can claim they are self-made. Each owes all they have to God, and in God, find their security.

God has blessed the king because he has trusted in him. But God punishes those who rebel against him. Elsewhere in the Bible, the wicked are often spoken of as consuming the poor and destroying the innocent. Here God is doing the consuming and the destroying. To use a modern phrase, he is giving them a taste of their own medicine.

And so the king ends where he began, exalting God and giving him the glory. In this psalm, we see the power and the authority of God. Even kings submit themselves to him. But we also see how taking the time to praise God for his past and present goodness (Psalm 21:2-7) can give us the confidence to declare his authority over our future (Psalm 21:8-12).