Flight JER01 - Part A

God has a plan for you.

And it began long before you were even born. God chose this prophet when he was yet unformed. That's how God begins with this calling. So it's pretty exciting to know that God chose you way, way before you even came into this world. Skip introduces you to the prophet Jeremiah, sharing a comforting message about God's great care and concern for you. But before we begin, we want to let you know about a resource that helps you live today in the eternal hope of Jesus resurrection. The aftermath of 2020 has left so many of us wrestling with questions about the future and wondering, what's next?

Here's Skip Heitzig. That's a question by the way that people ask anytime there is a catastrophe, any kind of catastrophic event causes people to ask the question, what's next? If there's a car accident that happens, well, what's next? I'm going to be able to walk after this. If a disease strikes someone, what's next? Am I going to be cured? If somebody we love dies, we ask, what's next? Am I going to be able to go on? We want to help you live with confidence, no matter what the future holds by sending you a powerful collection of Easter weekend messages from Skip Heitzig on the hope of the resurrection.

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To give online securely, visit connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888. Okay, we'll be in the book of Jeremiah for today's study. So let's join Skip Heitzig. Back in 1970, a band called Tree Dog Night said Jeremiah was a bullfrog, was a good friend of mine, didn't understand a single word he said, but I helped him drink his wine. It goes to show you that musicians really don't have to think through their lyrics to get a popular song. It's sort of a meaningless set of lyrics.

And it's very narcissistic to just have a friend just to be able to drink his wine, but you could care less about what he says. But anyway, they said Jeremiah was a bullfrog. And actually, Jeremiah was a bullhorn.

This Jeremiah is making strong cries and proclamations to the nation of Judah principally as well as to other nations secondarily. He was God's bullhorn, announcing to kings, announcing to royalty, announcing to the people who would gather in Jerusalem what is coming in their future. Jeremiah was both a priest and a prophet. He was a priest living in Jerusalem, working in Jerusalem when God called him at a young age.

And he ministered through almost five decades, between 40 and 50 years altogether. Some of the kings that he prophesied under the reign of are mentioned here in chapter one. He is called God's 11th hour prophet, because the clock of judgment is about to strike midnight. And at the 11th hour, even though other prophets have gone before, including Isaiah, to no regard, they didn't heed him, Jeremiah comes and repeats that strong message and is a little more emotional with it than Isaiah was. He says please to King Zedekiah at one point, please turn back to the Lord.

Spare yourself, spare this city, it's not too late. But like Isaiah, his cries were unheeded as well. Jeremiah's prophecy reminds me of an illustration I read about. It seems that a wedding took place at the church in the church basement. And I don't know if you've ever been to some of the old churches in the church basement. It's sort of like their fellowship hall.

It's the only extra big room they have. And so because a lot of different meetings take place, this one basement was decorated with different scriptures all around it, usually about God's love and God's mercy and God's patience, etc. Just reminding people, different scriptures. But during this wedding reception, right above the wedding cake happened to be the scripture Matthew chapter 3 verse 7 that read, flee from the wrath that is to come.

An odd, perhaps prophetic proclamation of what that marriage might encounter. Flee from the wrath that is to come. In an era in which other prophets, false prophets and politicians were trying to quiet and calm the people and say it's all good, nothing bad is going to happen. Jeremiah was saying flee from the wrath that is to come.

He was the only straight shooter of the bunch. Now from Isaiah's time, the chronology has advanced. Jeremiah has the grim duty of overseeing the death of a nation. He predicts it, but he will live through it. He's going to witness the Babylonians come in, he's going to watch as the city is burned.

He's going to see people that he loved being taken captive to another land. So Jeremiah is the prophet who oversaw the death of a nation. I look at Jeremiah as a tender warrior. He had a hard message, but he was a mix of toughness and tenderness in one person.

And that's good, especially for a guy who has to deliver a very hard message. Somebody once said no one has the right to preach about hell who doesn't first weep over it. And Jeremiah is interestingly known as not just the 11th hour prophet, but he's called the weeping prophet. And you'll see why next week.

More on that later. The book of Lamentations means the book of crying. Jeremiah writes as he sees Jerusalem being overtaken and he weeps over it. And this is why perhaps Jesus reminded people so much of Jeremiah. You remember when our Lord said to his disciples, Who do men say that I am? And of all the people they said, the people said reminded Jesus of was Jeremiah.

Some say that you are Jeremiah, Elijah or one of the prophets. And that's probably because Jesus would pronounce denunciation on one hand, he would say woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. But at the same time, he would turn with tenderness and compassion to those who needed it the most, like the woman caught in adultery. Jesus wept over the city of Jerusalem, as well as Jeremiah. Jesus coming down from the Mount of Olives overlooking the city at one point, began to weep.

The New Testament says saying Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I would have gathered you as a mother hen gathers her chicks, but you were not willing. And then, like Jeremiah, Jesus predicted the destruction not of the Babylonian army, but of the Roman army against Jerusalem. Now let me give you an outline of the book. I'm going to slice it up as I did in the book, the Bible from 30,000 feet into three simple slices. Preparation, proclamations, predictions. Jeremiah's preparation formulated, that's chapter one. Then Jeremiah's proclamations foretold, that's chapter two, all the way to chapter 51, that's most of the book. And then the last chapter is Jeremiah's prediction fulfilled, tells how the city actually fell according to what Jeremiah predicted. Now that large section, so you have sort of like the bulk of the book, that is Jeremiah's proclamations.

You have then two end caps, his preparation and his predictions. In that center core of the book, Jeremiah proclaims against two different groups. Number one, Judah, that's that southern kingdom of two tribes, Judah and Benjamin. That's Jerusalem, the southern kingdom of Judah.

And then finally, the other nations around Judah that God would judge because of their antagonism toward Judah and the Jewish people. So that forms the whole book. So we begin in chapter one with Jeremiah's preparation. And know this, Jeremiah is the author of the book, but the one who actually penned the book was probably his scribe mentioned 21 times in the book, a guy by the name of Baruch. So you have to picture a man dictating with an amanuensis, that is a scribe or a secretary, taking down what the prophet would say, or putting together the speeches that he gave or wrote or things he wrote, poems he wrote, etc.

And sort of like an anthology presenting this collection called the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah is the one who gave it, but the one who penned it was his secretary named Baruch. So chapter one, verse one, the words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin. You say, where is Anathoth? Anathoth is a little Arab village today called Anathah, and it's about three miles north of Jerusalem.

I've only seen it once. It's not much, it's just a little bit of a village, but at that time, it was a village assigned to the Levitical priests. So a lot of the priests who served in the temple lived there. Verse two, to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah, the son of Ammon, king of Judah, in the 13th year of his reign. It came also in the days of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, the king of Judah, until the end of the 11th year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the carrying away of Jerusalem captive in the fifth month.

So there's a lot of weird names there. And I'm going to actually go over a couple of them in a moment, but what we're told basically is Jeremiah had a 40 plus year ministry. Jeremiah ministered during the reign of five different Judean kings. Not all of them are mentioned here because some of the reign of those kings was so short that they're left out of this book, but they are included in the narrative of 2 Chronicles 36, 2 Kings chapter 8, 23, 24, 25, right around there.

They're mentioned in those places. So just a few of the kings are mentioned here, but let me give you a little rundown. Down south there was a good king named Josiah.

He's mentioned here. Josiah became king of Judah at a young age. He was a good guy, but he became a really great guy when a guy by the name of Hilkiah found a copy of the Torah, the law. And the Bible says that the people of Judah had not really read the law much up to that point. They really didn't know what was in it. Can you imagine?

That was sort of their playbook. That's sort of like going to a church, finding a Bible and nobody will. Bible? What's in that? I want to read that baby.

I have no idea what that's all about. Finding a New Testament. So they found the law and Hilkiah read the Torah in front of King Josiah. When Josiah heard it, he tore his robe, put sackcloth in his head and said, We are in deep trouble. Because what he just read, we are violating that covenant. So unless we repent, we're going to go into captivity like Deuteronomy 28 and 29 in the law that he just read said. So he humbles himself, asks God for forgiveness, reads it to the elders.

And there is a superficial turning, at least in leadership, a heartfelt turning of the king, but a superficial turning toward God of the people. That's Josiah. Josiah dies in battle. When Josiah dies in battle, his son, Jehoahaz, becomes king. Jehoahaz is not king very long. He's not mentioned. He's on the throne for three months. He barely gets the throne warm. And he is deposed by Pharaoh Neko, the king of Egypt, taken down to Egypt, placed in shackles and put in prison by Pharaoh Neko.

Are you following me so far? So we have Josiah followed by Jehoahaz. Jehoahaz is now in Egypt, in jail. In the place of Jehoahaz, the Pharaoh, who took him prisoner, put his brother Eliakim on the throne.

He's not mentioned here and here's why. Pharaoh Neko changed the name of Eliakim to Jehoiakim. See how complicated it gets? He changed his name probably to show superiority. I'm in charge, I conquered you, so I'm going to make a new name. That was what kings sometimes did. So we have Josiah killed. Jehoahaz, his son, three months, now in jail. Eliakim, his brother, now aka Jehoiakim, on the throne for 11 years. As he is on the throne, Jeremiah is prophesying, over in the east, Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon are gaining strength.

They're coming, making a move toward Judah. So Jeremiah says, yo, I don't know if he actually said yo, but he said, king, king Jehoiakim, whatever you do, don't rebel against king Nebuchadnezzar because he looks like he's going to take over the world, so don't rebel. He rebelled, so king Nebuchadnezzar deposed him from the throne and put a new guy in named Jehoiachin.

You're saying, Skip, you're not making it any easier. I just want to show you, A, the complications of some of these strategies and what's going on in the world, and I'm actually summing up for you the whole intrigue of what's going on with Jeremiah the prophet. So we have Josiah, Jehoahaz, Eliakim, aka Jehoiakim, now we have Jehoiachin. He's on the throne 3 months and 10 days, when because he rebels against Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar deposes him, takes him to Babylon, and places his uncle Zedekiah.

Don't worry, that's the last one. Zedekiah is now the vassal king of Babylon, following me so far. He's in good shape till he rebels against the Babylonian king. Nebuchadnezzar then destroys the city of Jerusalem, but here's what I want you to know. Zedekiah, who rebels against Nebuchadnezzar, obviously Nebuchadnezzar now is in charge of the world, including Egypt, Pharaoh, he wins the battle of Karshemesh, another story, another time. But Nebuchadnezzar knows the king Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, has run down to the Jordan. He's taken his family, he's rebelled against the king, but now he's running away. The king chases him down with his army, kills his two sons in front of his eyes, and Zedekiah was probably no more than 30 years of age, so his sons must have been young boys. So he kills his two young sons in front of his eyes, then he puts his eyes out, he blinds him, and takes him as a captive to Babylon so that the last living memory he would ever see in his life is the death of his own sons. That's how cruel Nebuchadnezzar was. During all of that time of those kings and intrigue, Jeremiah was being faithful to say Babylon is coming, turn to God, Babylon is coming, turn to God, don't harden your hearts, turn to God. But the people got harder and harder and harder.

Sorry I took up so much time on the names, I wanted you to get sort of the background of it. We're still at the beginning of chapter 1, verse 4. Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I sanctified you, I ordained you a prophet to the nations. Please notice God's view of life in the womb, by what he says to Jeremiah, indicates that there was a plan for the unborn zygote. The cells have come together, now they're starting to divide in that pre-embryonic state when the DNA has just come together and is starting to formulate into more and more cells. Before there is even a formation, God says, I knew you intimately and I formulated my plan for you. You know we live in a state that flatly goes against the Bible's view on the sacred sanctity of life in the womb. You know that we happen to live in a state that has pushed for, in the legislature, late-term abortion on demand for any reason, and even without parental consent, if you're a minor, and even if you're a doctor and you say, I can't perform that abortion on moral grounds or religious grounds, our legislators in this state have been pushing that they have to terminate that pregnancy if that person says they want it. You have no say in it.

Now you compare that to this. Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And I ordained you, I sanctified you, I ordained you as a prophet to the nations.

I know I may be taking up too much time with this, but it's on my heart, so Psalm 139, I'm just going to read a couple of verses to you. David wrote this psalm, and he said this, For you formed my inward parts, you covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame, that is my skeletal structure, was not hidden from you when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed, and in your book they were all written the day's fashion for me when there was as yet none of them. David is going to the womb for an example of God's power.

He goes to the heavens, but he goes, now look in the womb, because God's view of personhood begins at the moment of conception. And so a professor in an ethics class presented this dilemma to his students. He said, How would you advise a mother pregnant with her fifth child based upon the following? Her husband has had syphilis. She had tuberculosis. The first child was born blind. The second child died. The third child was born deaf. The fourth child had tuberculosis. Now, with this pregnancy, the mother is considering an abortion.

Would you advise her to have one? Most of the students agreed that this mother, this woman, should have an abortion. And the professor then said, Congratulations, you've just killed one of the greatest composers ever, Ludwig von Beethoven.

The professor went on to say, Those were the circumstances in that family. All of that to say this, God has a plan for you. And it began long before you were even born. God chose this prophet when he was yet unformed. That's how God begins with this calling.

So it's pretty exciting to know that God chose you way, way before you even came into this world. That's Skip Heiseck with a message from the series The Bible from 30,000 Feet. Now, here's Skip to share how you can keep these messages coming your way to connect you and others to the good news of Jesus. The prophet Jeremiah had a tough message to deliver, but he did it with compassion and hope. That's a lot like the message of the gospel. You have to hear the bad news that you're a sinner before you can hear the good news that there's a Savior who loves you more than you can imagine.

If you want to help share that good news with even more people, I invite you to give a gift right now. Keep listening to hear how you can do that. Skip has several Bible reading plans available in the YouVersion Bible app. You can dive deeper into several books of the Bible to gain new insights. Just search Skip Heiseck in the YouVersion Bible app. Now, before we go, tune in to watch Connect with Skip Heiseck on the Hillsong Channel on Saturdays at 4 30 p.m. Mountain or catch it on TVN on Sundays at 5 30 a.m. Eastern. Check out the local listings and be sure to come back next week as Skip Heiseck shares about how God called his people back to himself through the prophet Jeremiah. It's so important to cultivate intimacy in your relationship with the Lord. Connect with Skip Heiseck is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.