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Jeremiah 52: A Future and a Hope
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The More We Dig. The More We Find.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, pastor Brandon, today, the final one Jeremiah, chapter 52, and today's title is A Future and a Hope. A Future and a Hope. This is the grand finale of the ministry of Jeremiah and I'm looking forward to get to the end because I want to kind of tell you some next steps that is not written in the Bible, but what a lot of theologians and different Jewish commentators think happened after the fall of Jerusalem. So we'll get into all that in just a moment. But if you like what we're doing here as you're getting your Bible ready to go, make sure that you like share, subscribe to the YouTube channel and the podcast, make sure you leave us a five-star review on the podcast. You will forever and always be my favorites. You are the OGs, you are the ones who started this journey with us and I'm so thankful for you and make sure you're going to the Bible breakdown discussion on Facebook. It was an amazing group of people there who are working hard every day to come up with different ways to do some devotions for us and just challenge us, and I love them so much. They do so much of a, they do such a great job, and so make sure you are thanking them by sharing the posts that they do and then also replying to them, because that's their goal is. They are trying so hard to create discussion and community. So thank you so much in advance for doing that. All right, well, once again, if you have your Bibles, I want to open up with me to Jeremiah, chapter 52. This is the end. This is the final moment of the ministry of Jeremiah and, as we saw yesterday, in the last part of the verse, it said that that ended the messages of Jeremiah. So what has been going on? If you're just now joining us which is it's crazy that you're joining us on the last chapter, but hey, I'm glad you're here what's been going on is.
Speaker 1:The overall theme of Jeremiah is God gives us a future and a hope, and we need that many times when we feel like we don't have a future and there is no hope. And that's one thing I love about God is all throughout the book of Jeremiah, he's constantly telling them guys, you're going in the wrong direction, things are going really, really bad, but I still love you, I still have a plan for you, I still want good things for you and I still want to make this thing work. And so they're just constantly going through all of this stuff and it's continuing to get worse and worse. And then, uh, the Babylonian empire with King Nebuchadnezzar, they get there and they're they're laying siege to Jerusalem and all these things are happening. And poor Jeremiah, he's going up, sometimes daily, to the temple and he's arguing with the false prophets and he's saying guys, we've got to surrender, god's going to give this city over because he's got to have justice. So we've got to surrender. And then they end up throwing him into a cistern and just all this stuff happens. Well, finally the moment has come. Was Jeremiah right? Wasn't King Nebuchadnezzar going to take over Jerusalem? Was Jeremiah right? Wasn't King Nebuchadnezzar going to take over Jerusalem? Or was the false prophets right? Well, spoiler alert, they were called false prophets for a reason. So let's see how it ends.
Speaker 1:Jeremiah 52, verse 1, says this Zedekiah was 21 years old when he became king and he reigned in Jerusalem for 11 years. His mother was Hamutul, the daughter of Jeremiah from Libna. That's not the same Jeremiah, by the way, but Zedekiah did what was evil in the Lord's sight, just as Jehoiakim had done. These things happened because the Lord's anger against the people of Jerusalem and Judah until he finally banished them from his presence and sent them into exile. Verse 4,.
Speaker 1:So on January 15th, during the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign, king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon led his entire army against Jerusalem. They surrounded the city and built siege ramps against the walls. Jerusalem was kept under siege until the 11th year of King Zedekiah's reign. By July 18th, in the 11th year of Zedekiah's reign, the famine in the city had become very severe and the last of the food was completely gone. Then a section of the city wall was broken down and all the soldiers fled, since the city was surrounded by the Babylonians and they waited for nightfall. Then they slipped through the gate between the two walls behind the king's garden and headed toward the Jordan Valley. But the Babylonian troops chased King Zedekiah and overtook him in the plains of Jericho, for his men had all deserted him and scattered. They captured the king, took him to the king of Babylon at Riblah in the land of Hamath. There the king of Babylon pronounced judgment on Zedekiah. The king of Babylon made Zedekiah watch as he slaughtered his sons, as he also slaughtered all the officials of Judah at Riblah. Then he gouged out Zedekiah's eyes, bound him in bronze chains and the king of Babylon led him away to Babylon. Zedekiah remained there in prison until the day of his death.
Speaker 1:Wow, so here we go, verse 12. On August 17th of that year, which was the 19th year of King Nebuchadnezzar's reign, nebuchadnezzar, the captain of the guard and the officials of the Babylonian king arrived in Jerusalem. He burned down the temple of the Lord, the royal palace and all the houses of Jerusalem. He destroyed all the important buildings in the city. Then he supervised the entire Babylonian army as they tore down the walls of Jerusalem on every side. Then Nebuchadnezzar, the captain of the guard, took as exiles some of the poorest of the people and the rest of the people who remained in the city, the defectors who had declared their allegiance to the king of Babylon and the rest of the craftsmen. But Nebuchadnezzar allowed some of the poorest people to stay behind to care for the vineyards and fields.
Speaker 1:The Babylonians broke up the bronze pillars in front of the Lord's temple, the bronze water carts and the great bronze basin called to sea and they carried all the bronze away to Babylon. They also took all of the ash buckets, shovels, lamp snuffers, basins, dishes and all the other bronze articles used for making sacrifices at the temple. Sacrifices at the temple. The captain of the guard also took the small bowls, incense burners, basins, pots, lampstands, ladles, bowls that were used for the liquid offerings and all the other articles made of pure gold or silver. The weight of bronze from the two pillars, the sea and the twelve bronze oxen beneath it and the water carts were too great to be measured. These things have been made for the Lord's temple in the days of King Solomon. Each of the pillars was 27 feet tall and 18 feet in circumference. They were hollow and the walls were three inches thick. The bronze capital on top of each pillar was seven and a half feet high and was decorated with a network of bronze pomegranates all the way around. There were 96 pomegranates on the sides and the total of 100 pomegranates on the network around the top.
Speaker 1:Nebuchadnezzar the king. The captain of the guard took him with him as prisoner Saria the high priest, stephania, the priest of the second rank and the three chief priests, gatekeepers From among the people still hiding in the city. He took an officer who had been in charge of the Judean army, seven of the king's personal advisors, the army commander's chief secretary who was in charge of recruitment and 60 other citizens. Nebuchadnezzar, the captain of the guard, took them all to the king of Babylon at Riblah. There, at Riblah, in the land of Hamath, the king of Babylon had them all put to death. So the people of Judah were sent into exile from their land. The number of captives taken to Babylon in the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign was 3,023. Then, in Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year, he took 832 more. In Nebuchadnezzar's 23rd year he sent Nebuchadnezzar, the captain of the guard, who took 745 more, a total of 4,600 captives in all.
Speaker 1:In the 37th year of the exile of King Jehoiakim of Judah, evil Mesoreah ascended to the Babylonian throne. He was kind to Jehoiakim and released him from prison on March 31st of that year. He spoke kindly to Jehoiakim and gave him a higher place than all the other exile kings in Babylon. He supplied Jehoiakim with new clothes to replace his prison garb and allowed him to dine in the king's presence for the rest of his life. So the Babylonian king gave him regular food allowance as long as he lived. This continued until the day of his death. Wow, what a very, very, very sad ending to an already sad book of the Bible.
Speaker 1:As we finish the book of Jeremiah. I want to talk about the two things I have listed here, and that is then what happened and what happened to the Ark of the Covenant. Now, what I mean by that is, first of all, then, what happened. Well, after that happened, we will later get into the book of Ezekiel, which a lot of that was written during the exile, which was for 70 years. So for 70 years they're in these foreign lands, and Ezekiel is a very interesting book. I can't wait to read Ezekiel together. It's going to be a fascinating journey, to say the least. Ezekiel is a wild man, but also the book of Daniel could easily be picked up after this, because the Bible talks about how Daniel and his three friends that we know of as Shadrach, meshach and Abednego they had been taken from Jerusalem to Babylon, and so this actually goes into a time where one of the greatest prophets of the entire Old Testament, daniel he came out of this, came out of this dark place. God was still moving in the middle of darkness.
Speaker 1:But then also, the other thing is is what happened to the things of the temple. Now, if you've been with us for a while as we read through, you know first and second Kings, first and second Chronicles, where we got to watch the in first and second Samuel, the dynasty of David, begin, and then Solomon builds this beautiful temple and all this wonderful stuff. Well, all of these things that we've been reading about was going on while this beautiful temple was still there. And you imagine these neighboring armies. They hear of this temple that's made out of bronze and gold and silver and all these different things. What a prize right temple that's made out of bronze and gold and silver and all these different things. What a prize right. Well, in Babylon, when they came in, they destroyed everything and they took all the things.
Speaker 1:But here's the question Did you notice, as we're reading through things? It talked about certain objects. It didn't mention the table of showbread, didn't mention the incense altar, didn't mention the menorah. These are all things that were in the holy place, but the most important thing in the holiest of holy, it did not mention the Ark of the Covenant. Now, many scholars have thought that this is quite different, quite unique, quite noteworthy, because the Ark of the Covenant was not an idol, it was not God, it was a symbol of God's presence. It was a symbol of God's presence Because what the Bible teaches is that God would manifest his presence just above the Ark of the Covenant and it was almost as though he would sit, he would rest himself on top of the Ark of the Covenant. That's why it was called the mercy seat, but it was a symbol of the focus of God's presence for the nation of Israel. Very, very holy object, the most holy object in the Old Testament.
Speaker 1:Well, wouldn't you think if they took the Ark of the Covenant, jeremiah would have mentioned it? Or if Jeremiah didn't write this last part because maybe he was dead at that time it would have been written. So most scholars believe that when they went to destroy the Ark of the Covenant, it wasn't there. Now we don't know for sure, and so there are some scholars who say it was just too hard to mention, so they just put it in there, whatever. But many scholars believe that Jeremiah himself, knowing that the siege was going to end, knowing that the Babylonian Empire was going to get through, siege was going to end, knowing that the Babylonian empire was going to get through, many scholars believe that before or just as the Babylonian army was coming into Jerusalem, that Jeremiah went in and he took the Ark and he hid it. Now, your guess is as good as mine where he would have put it. There are some who think he took it to Ethiopia and there are some who think that he hid the Ark of the Covenant under the Temple Mount. We don't know for sure, but what we do know is there is no evidence and, as far as I have researched, there is no writings in the Babylonian archives that says that they took the Ark of the Covenant. So it is a mystery where it was. But, once again, many think that if they had have destroyed the Ark of the Covenant, it would have been such a devastating thing to the people of God that it would have been mentioned by Jeremiah. So the very fact he did mention it makes a lot of people think that it wasn't there. So what do we do with Jeremiah?
Speaker 1:Jeremiah is a complicated book because on one end, it's devastating to see how Jeremiah spends his entire ministry and in the eyes of some people it would have been considered a complete failure. What I mean by that is, his job was to warn the nation of Israel, judah, that if they didn't turn around they were going to be destroyed. Well, they never turned around and they were destroyed. So some people would look and go. Well, man, what a failure. He didn't have a single convert in his entire ministry. Well, it depends on how you look at success. If success is having people buy into what you're doing, okay fine. But if success is obeying the assignment God has given you, then he was a complete success.
Speaker 1:As a matter of fact, that's the other side of the book of Jeremiah. That is beautiful, and that is that Jeremiah went through so many hard things. I mean, you imagine what it's like to live your life serving God. And you're the only one. As a matter of fact, everybody tells you man, you are going too far, you're doing too much, you just need to relax a little bit. Why are you trying so hard? Just chill out a little bit, man, I just want to serve God. You're making me feel uncomfortable. That's how he spent his life and he's faithful.
Speaker 1:I love how, throughout many places in Jeremiah, he's honest and he says God, I don't want to do this anymore. God, this is hard, nobody cares. And the whole time, god tells Jeremiah you just keep doing what you're doing. You're doing okay, your job is to not count successes, your job is faithfulness, and I'm going to do the rest. And so what do we do with Jeremiah? I think that we need to remember that, in the middle of any difficulty, god still has a hope and a future for us.
Speaker 1:And I think maybe a lesson we can learn from Jeremiah is to be so very careful how we judge success. If we judge success by how much money we make, by how big our house is, by how well our kids do, by all the different things, then we may find ourselves never measuring up, because there's always a little bit more right. But if we measure success in finding how I can best honor God with my life and then doing that, I got a feeling when we get to heaven we will hear well done, good and faithful servant. Because if you look at it one way, jeremiah didn't get a lot of converts, but it sure would seem like when he got to heaven, God probably wasn't saying man, why didn't you do a better job? Look at what I had to do. Rather, he would have said you would have heard well done, you did exactly what I told you to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but God, they never turned around. They never. They didn't repent. You had to destroy it. I know I didn't call you to make them repent. I called you to tell them about my goodness, tell them about my justice and let them make up their own mind. That was success. Don't let the enemy try to make success a carrot on a stick that you never can quite get. Instead, it's about faithfulness, and you can do that every single day.
Speaker 1:Let's pray together right now. God, thank you so much for the book of Jeremiah. Thank you, god, for the life that he lived. God, that you used him, lord, to be an example to us all these years later. Thank you, holy Spirit, that your word inspires us to take these next steps and to redefine success. I pray, god, as we move closer and closer every day to you, that you'll help us to remember that success is not defined by what we achieve. It's defined by who we become and how closely we follow you. I pray, god, that you will help us to never forget these lessons. In Jesus' name, we pray amen, amen, one more time. Come on, let's say it together. God's word says in Jeremiah 29, verse 13, if you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. Let that be our prayer every single day. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow. For the first chapter of 2 Peter.
