A Profecia de Jeremias

Welcome to another

episode of Encounter with the Word. Here in

our program we are studying the entire

Bible, and it is a blessing for us to have you

with us. Our studies have already brought us

to the prophetic books of the Old

Testament. After studying

Isaiah, the prophet of prophets, we are

ready to learn about another,

greater prophet. Following the sequence in the Bible, the

next prophet is Jeremiah, known

as the weeping prophet. He

always seemed to be crying. His heart was

wounded. Have you read the book of Jeremiah?

All 52 chapters of this book are

a series of cries. That's why it's very

difficult to make a sketch of it. People

don't cry in an organized way, and that's why

the book of Jeremiah isn't very

organized. After spending 52 chapters

weeping, Jeremiah wrote a poem.

This poem is the Book of Lamentations, an

appendix to the Book of Jeremiah.

So, he continued crying

in this other book as well.

You might be wondering, "But

why did Jeremiah cry so much? Why

was he so sad?" In chapter 4,

verse 19, he cries. Oh, my

anguish, my anguish.

But why was he so distressed? Do

you remember that I said that

the prophetic books contain

historical information in their introductions about

the king who reigned at the time of the

prophet's ministry? That is why, before

studying the prophets, we study the

historical books.

If you can recall the kings we studied

in the literature of the kingdom when we analyzed the

first and second books of Kings and

Chronicles, you should already know why Jeremiah

was so sad and why he wept so much for him

.

Right at the beginning of the book we learn

that Jeremiah began his

ministry in the 13th year of King Josiah,

going through all the kings who reigned

between the kingdoms of Jehoiakim and

Zedekiah, such as Jehoiachin and

Jeah.

If you are familiar with them and

know when they lived and reigned, you

will also understand why Jeremiah's heart

was wounded. Jeremiah's ministry

lasted 41 years and began when

King Josiah reigned in Judah. ​​It was

during this time that the men

working on rebuilding the temple

rediscovered the scriptures.

At that time, God's people were

apostate and had turned away from God. They

had even forgotten that God's law existed

. During the reconstruction of the

temple, they found some scrolls

of scripture.

In fact, it was a descendant of Ezra

who found the Scriptures.

Apparently, it was through these scrolls

that God influenced Ezra to become

a human instrument, a scribe who

brought back interest in the

scriptures.

Scholars believe that it was Ezra

who organized the Old Testament into

books and divisions. This occurred

during this revival of interest

in the scriptures during the reign of

King Josiah. The names of the kings who

succeeded Josiah are associated with the

fall of Jerusalem and the

Babylonian captivity. The mention of kings such as

Jeachim, Joachim, and Jeah reveals that

Jeremiah lived and preached during the time when

Jerusalem was taken by

Babylon.

Jerusalem was not brought down

overnight, as happened with Paris and

Singapore during the early days of

World War II. The fall of

Jerusalem was a catastrophe that

extended over a period of almost 20

years. We saw this in the study of the second

book of Kings. At the time of the first fall of

Jerusalem, Jehoiakim was king. He

surrendered to Nebuchadnezzar's army and

served him in Jerusalem for 3 years. When

Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, the

Babylonian armies entered the city

and the Jews were forced to serve them and

pay them tribute. But after 3

years, Jehoiakim rebelled, and

Nebuchadnezzar's army besieged Jerusalem again.

In the second conquest, Joaquim, son of

Jeaquim, who was practically a

child, surrendered the city. This time,

the Babylonians took many Jewish

captives to Babylon. This second

conquest was more severe than the

first. When Jehoiachin surrendered for the

second time, shortly before the people

were taken captive to Babylon,

Zedekiah, his brother, was appointed

puppet king of Babylon in Jerusalem.

If the appointed leader did not do what the

conquerors ordered, he was

quickly removed from power and another

puppet took his place. Zedekiah was the

figurehead king of Babylon for

11 years. But he also ended up

rebelling, which led the

Babylonian army to reduce the city of

Jerusalem to dust. Not a stone was left unturned

. When the Babylonians

conquered Jerusalem for the third

time, they removed the entire population from the city.

They left only the elderly, the sick, the

weak, and the prophet Jeremiah.

The third fall of Jerusalem was a

major catastrophe.

In the introduction to the book of Jeremiah,

we read that his ministry began during the

reign of Josiah and continued through the

reigns of Jehoiakim to Zedekiah.

This means that Jeremiah was

preaching and ministering in Jerusalem

when all this tragedy that I have just

related befell Jerusalem. That's why

he's crying. Oh, my

anguish, my anguish.

Jeremiah, already during the reign of

Josiah, began to prophesy that the

Babylonian invasion, captivity, and

conquest were about to happen

because of the people's sin. The principal

sin was idolatry, but also

all the other sins that arose with

the apostasy of the people. The beginning of the

message from the prophet, and from prophets like

Jeremiah, let's say, Isaiah, and

others, was: "If my people, who are called

by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek

my face and turn from their wicked

ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive

their sin and will heal their land."

This was the message of the prophets in the face

of the possibility of an invasion and

captivity as God's judgment. But

when the people did not listen, the message

changed and became: "God's judgment

is approaching. There is no way to stop it.

Judgment is drawing near."

When God gave this revelation to

Jeremiah,

it was so clear that he could even

hear the sound of the Babylonian army, the

cries of the people being

murdered, of the women and girls

being raped.

Through a prophetic revelation,

Jeremiah heard all these sounds of

horror, and that is why he cried out:

"Ah, my anguish!" My anguish.

God revealed to Jeremiah the approach of

all this calamity.

This was God's judgment, and it was

irrevocable.

When the siege of Jerusalem began,

Jeremiah preached a very

unpopular message that made him the most hated of

all the prophets. Jeremiah had two

messages. The first part of the message

was that conquest and captivity

were drawing near. This was his

message of destruction, sadness, and

judgment. But the other side of

Jeremiah's message was one of hope. When

Isaiah predicted the fall of the northern kingdom

to the Assyrians, he had

no message of hope for the

period of Assyrian invasion, conquest, and

captivity.

The 10 northern tribes were consigned to

oblivion and were never

heard from again. But the prophets who

prophesied the invasion and captivity of the

southern kingdom by the Babylonians had

a message of hope, because God

also gave these prophets the following

revelation: "After 70 years of

captivity in Babylon, you will return."

Isaiah preached this message of hope

170 years before it happened. Jeremiah

also preached this same message

so emphatically and believed

in it so strongly. that when the

Babylonian armies began to besiege

Jerusalem, he began to preach. Look,

this is a prophecy, it's the word of

God. This is God's

irrevocable plan. There's

nothing you can do to

stop it. Therefore, you'd better

surrender to Nabuco Donozor and hit

the road. Go to Babylon,

because the sooner you go,

the sooner you will return. Don't resist

Nabuco Dononzor. God is using him to

punish you. And if you oppose

Nebuchadnezzar, you are opposing

God.

Jeremiah preached that the people of Judah

should surrender, and the people hated him for

it. They said that Jeremiah's message

was a conspiracy,

a conspiracy against the people.

They threw him into a cistern that,

instead of water, contained mud. They

tied him there with a rope so

that he would get stuck in the mud

with rats and without food. The way they

treated him was cruel and shows how much

they hated him.

The sieges had already begun. Some

lasted more than two years. The Jews

were eating their own children

because they had no food, and the prophet

kept preaching. I said: God wants

you to surrender. Today we see people

chaining themselves to the gates of nuclear power plants

and doing all sorts of things

just to be heard. and to pass on their

message.

Jeremiah and some of the other prophets

acted in this way as well. They would do anything

to be heard. They used resources

such as symbolic sermons. For example, in

chapter 18, Jeremiah delivered one of those

sermons that we might call the

recycled vessel. He said that God sent him to the pottery workshop

.

And while he was there, he saw the

potter making a vase. The potter was

trying to make a beautiful vase, but it

wasn't turning out the way he wanted.

Disgusted with the work, the potter

smashed it on the ground, then recycled the

clay and made a new vase. He was trying to

tell the people: "You are going to

Babylon, but after 70 years

you will return." Don't you realize? You are

the vessel, the little pieces of the vessel that the

potter, the sculptor God, is forming.

You weren't becoming the way

God wanted you to be, so he is

punishing you. This is God's judgment

on their lives. God will recycle

you and make a new vessel. When you

return from Babylonian captivity, you will be

new creatures. You will be a

new vessel. That is why Jeremiah told

them to go out and hit the road.

Before the captivity, the Jews were

incorrigible idolaters. After the

Babylonian captivity, despite

having many problems, they never again

fell into idolatry. When they

returned from captivity, they were like new vessels.

What an amazing app, right? This

transition from old to new vase can

be agonizing, but once the vase is

shaped, it's wonderful.

I'll end by leaving you with this challenge. Have you ever been

transformed into a new vase? God wants to

do something beautiful in your life. Let it be

molded, just as a potter molds

clay; surrender control of your life to God

. And I'm counting on you for our

next encounter with the Word. Until then.

This is a study written by Dr.

Edson Bruno and narrated by Pastor Edson Bruno.

[Music]