Day 225 (Jeremiah 23-25) - Year 8

**Tara-Leigh Cobble** (0:01)
Hey Bible Readers, I'm Tara-Leigh Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap.
Jeremiah opens today with God's rebuke of the leaders of Judah, and in his rebuke, he seems to contradict himself. In verse 2, he says, You have scattered my flock and have driven them away.
Then as he talks about how he's going to respond to the evil actions of these leaders, he says in verse 3, I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them. So who did the scattering and driving away? The leaders of Judah or God? Yes, the leaders were the active agent, but as we know, God is using their wicked actions within his good and righteous overarching plan. I'm so glad I serve a God who redeems the wicked things done to his kids. God promises to bring his sheep back to the land and says, They shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall any be missing. Fearlessness is a trait of God's sheep because he has proven himself to be our good shepherd.
God promises a day when he'll raise up a righteous king from among the line of David. And of course, this is a prophecy of Christ. And God says when that new king reigns on earth, his people will have new things to praise him for that will wildly surpass what they used to praise him for.
In the meantime, though, God is judging Judah. And he says the sins of Judah and its capital Jerusalem are worse than the sins of Israel and its capital Samaria. Why is that? Because Samaria Israel was prophesying by Baal, but the people of Jerusalem were pretending to prophesy by Yahweh and were lying, all the while worshiping gods and oppressing the poor.
The people of Judah had access to the temple and to the Levites and to the scrolls, and they still disobeyed. They have a higher level of accountability and responsibility because of what they know and have access to.
The prophets speak only good news. They proclaim to have God-given dreams, but it's all made up. He says His word is more powerful than a dream anyway, and if their dreams don't align with His word, then their dreams are false. But they don't listen to God's word, so how could they speak it? How could they even know if their dreams do align? They're leading God's people astray, and God says, You may think I'm far away, but I'm everywhere, and I see everything you're doing. Then there's a section that's kind of confusing in 23, 33 through 40, because it's a play on words in Hebrew. Here's the inside scoop. The Hebrew word masa has two meanings, message and burden. So Jeremiah is basically saying, if anyone asks you what the masa message of God is, you can tell them that you are the masa burden. It's kind of a highbrow insult. And at that point, Jeremiah is so frustrated with their lies that he forbids the use of the word masa. He says, I will punish anyone who says they have the masa message. The only thing you're allowed to say is, what has God already said about this? Jeremiah tears it down to the studs and basically says, if you really want to know what God is saying, pay attention to what God has already said. In modern days, I heard one pastor put it like this, if you want to hear God speak, read your Bible out loud. That way, there's no question about God's message.
In chapters 24 and 25, we scooch back a little bit in history. We've already talked about how Zedekiah is the last king of Judah, and that's easy to remember because his name starts with a Z, the last letter of the English alphabet. But here we see info about some of the next to last kings. Bear with these flashbacks and try not to be frustrated over the way Baruch the scribe recorded Jeremiah's timeline.
Chapter 24 tells us that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, let's call him King Nebi, has taken Judas' prince and a bunch of their other leaders into captivity. So this tells us that Babylon is already getting a foothold in Judah, and we're nearing the end of their kingdom. After that, when King Zedekiah becomes king, God gives Jeremiah a vision of two baskets of figs in front of the temple, one very good and the other very bad. God says the good figs represent the remnant that he will return to the land someday, even after they've gone into exile in the land of the Chaldeans. By the way, this is important. The words Chaldean and Babylonian are often used interchangeably. You're going to see that a lot throughout this book, so don't let that confuse you. And for the good figs, God says, I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. I love that God is capable of giving people new hearts. It's clear that we can't do it on our own. We're hopeless without him. But he gives new hearts as a part of the adoption process into his family.