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Jeremiah 21:1-22:23 Terror-all-around

by fol CHURCH on April 10, 2021

Yesterday’s Pashur (terror-all-around) wanted to muzzle Jeremiah from the offset. Persecution ratchets upwards. Today’s Pashur forms part of a contingency sent by King Zedekiah to plea bargain with God to avert the Babylonian invasion 21:2. But neither averts disaster. The ministry of this priest was impotent.  He too was called terror-all-around, linked as he was to the coming tsunami of events.

Jeremiah’s answer is that you cannot bargain with God, but must live right 22:3.  Far from rescuing Zedekiah and the people, they would be either killed off by sword, famine (effects of siege), plague or carried off as slaves to Babylon.  Again, a merciful God exhorts to repentance the king and the people to avert disaster 22:1-6. The triple disasters plague, famine and sword is repeated in v.9, which implies the seriousness of God’s warning.

The disasters also foreshadow the horses of the apocalypse in Revelation 6. John views them from a heavenly perspective, so sees them perhaps in reverse order to how we on the earth will experience them:  the composite horse first with a build-up of pestilence, famine and war, followed by these features full-blown separately with the other horses.  Although responsible for all this, the antichrist is discerned by the world as saviour, as he ushers in huge persecution of Christians at the fifth seal opening, and triggers the wrath of God upon unbelieving humanity (sixth and seventh seals). It means we should stop looking out for the Antichrist’s appearance as a start to the tribulation, instead begin more to watch the signs of the time; recognising that ‘pestilence’ could mark the beginning of the tribulation and the last seven years of history (Daniel’s 70th week), rather than Antichrist’s appearing.

Jeremiah’s ministry spans a long time and many kingships of Israel.  Josiah was one of Israel’s rare good kings.  The books of the kings recounts the difference his righteous leadership made to the nation.  However, the change was impermanent so that by the time of his successor Jehoiakim, things had backslidden so much that Jeremiah prophesies for him a worse burial fate than that of a donkey v.19.

Finally, one note about the mixture of poetry and prose in Jeremiah: prose tends to reflect what its speaker is thinking; poetry what he is feeling.

As you read these chapters notice the balance of God’s reason and his passion at the refusal of most of humanity to repent and, in new covenant terms, accept Jesus.  Remember: if he is to be true to his everlasting character there are some things God cannot do: one is to neglect forever the demands of justice, for which the fifth seal martyrs cry out.

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Let’s pray for guidance to ‘live right’ in everything we do before God. Amen.

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