Consequences of Rebellion and Jeremiah's Persecution

So the theme of this reign, my friends, is if Josiah, the first king that Jeremiah dealt with, represents God's final appeal, and Jehoiakim represents Judah's open rejection of God's word, then Zedekiah represents the consequences of the rebellion of all of those years. Babylon does surround Jerusalem. The warnings Jeremiah preached for 40 years finally come to pass. Yet in the darkest days of Judah's history, God gives Jeremiah some of the greatest promises of hope in the entire Tanakh, or the Old Testament. And these are the things that Jeremiah received here: the new covenant, Jeremiah 31; the restoration of Israel, the Branch of David, Jeremiah 23; the rebuilding of the nation. The darkest days become the backdrop for God's brightest promises. Amen.

So with that being said, we'll begin with chapter number 20 as we work through the last portion of the book of Jeremiah with King Zedekiah. So in chapter 20, it says, "Now Pashur, the son of Immer, the priest, who was also chief governor in the house of the Lord, heard that Jeremiah prophesied these things. Then Pashur struck Jeremiah the prophet and put him in the stocks that were in the upper gate of Benjamin, which was by the house of Adonai. And it happened on the next day that Pashur brought Jeremiah out of the stocks. Then Jeremiah said to him, 'The Lord has not called your name Pashur, but Magor-missabib. For thus says the Lord, behold, I will make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends, and they shall fall by the sword of their enemies, and your eyes shall see it. I will give all of Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall carry them captive to Babylon, and slay them with the sword. Moreover, I will deliver all the wealth of this city, all of its produce, all of its precious things, all of the treasures of the kings of Judah, I will give into the hands of their enemies, who will plunder them, seize them, and carry them to Babylon. And you, Pashur, and all who dwell in your house shall go into captivity. You shall go to Babylon, and there you shall die and be buried there, you and all of your friends to whom you have prophesied lies.'"

So Jeremiah is dealing with the false prophets of the day. As we can see throughout the book, there were a lot of false prophets. We'll deal with one more as we go down the chapters here. But he was dealing with Pashur. He was telling the people false hope that the king of Babylon would not destroy the temple, would not destroy the land, a bunch of lies. And Jeremiah told him that he was not called by the Lord. So Jeremiah had to deal with a lot of things, including the false prophets of the day, the kings of the day, the princes of the day. He had to deal with all of the people that God warned him would come against Jeremiah because of the word of Adonai, thus sayeth the Lord. So we find Jeremiah right in the beginning of Zedekiah's reign going against the false prophets and telling the kings and also the prophets that they are false, that the king of Babylon will come and do what God has ordained to the city and also to the people.

In verse number seven, "Oh Lord, you induced me, and I was persuaded. You are stronger than I and have prevailed. And this is Jeremiah crying out to the Lord, everybody. I am in derision daily. Everyone mocks me. For when I spoke, I cried out, I shouted violence and plunder, because the word of the Lord has made me a reproach and a derision daily. Then I said, I will not make mention of Him, nor speak it anymore in His name. But His word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones. I was weary of holding it back, and I could not, for I heard many mocking, fear on every side. 'Report,' they say, 'and we will report it.' All my acquaintances watch for my stumbling, saying, 'Perhaps he can be induced, then we will prevail against him, and we will take our revenge on him.' But the Lord is with me as a mighty awesome one. Therefore, my persecutors will stumble and will not prevail. They will be greatly ashamed, for they will not prosper. Their everlasting confusion will never be forgotten. But, oh Lord of hosts, you who test the righteous and see the mind and heart, let me see Your vengeance on them, for I have pleaded my cause before You. Sing to the Lord. Praise the Lord, for He has delivered the life of the poor from the hand of evildoers. Cursed be the day in which I was born. Let the day not be blessed in which my mother bore me. Let the man be cursed who brought news to my father, saying, 'A male child has been born to you,' making him very glad. And let that man be like the cities which the Lord overthrew and did not relent. Let him hear the cry in the morning and the shouting at noon, because he did not kill me from the womb, that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb always enlarged with me. Why did I come forth from the womb to see labor and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?'"

So, my friends, right here in the opening of Zedekiah's reign, we see not only Jeremiah calling out the false prophet but also in anguish, crying out to Adonai. He did that a couple of times throughout the book, and I'm sure throughout the 40 years, he did it a lot that's not even recorded. With the mantle that God put on this man to come across everybody, remember what he said? Against the kings, against the princes, against the city, against Judah, against the people, against everybody is what God put Jeremiah against to speak the word of God. And people have a problem with that, right? Even today, people have a problem with the word of God. Even the Jewish people do, the Christians do. People have a problem with God's commandments. And that's why we're in the position that we're in right now, and also that Judah was in the position that they were. So Jeremiah was crying out to the Lord and really cursing the day that he was born. He was really in a lot of anguish. I don't think that was a pity party, so to speak. I think it was just a lot of anguish. That's why he's called the weeping prophet, because he loved God and he loved his people. The two greatest commandments that there are. And that's what you see throughout the Holy Bible. King David, Moses, Abraham, all of them loved God and they loved His ways, His commandments. So Jeremiah is in anguish right at the beginning of Zedekiah's reign. I'm sure he was in anguish throughout Josiah and Jehoiakim's reign as well. But Zedekiah, this is the ending of the 18 years, if you will, that Jeremiah dealt with Zedekiah. And this is how he felt, so to speak.

So the theme that we have with chapter 20 is Jeremiah's persecution and personal struggle. Pashur strikes Jeremiah and places him in the stocks. Jeremiah becomes discouraged. He even wishes he had never been born. Yet he cannot stop proclaiming the word of God because it was shut up in his bones like a fire, so to speak. And he had the zeal of the Lord. And my friends, that's what we've got to get back to right now is the zeal of the Lord. You know what I see? And there's nothing wrong with this to a certain degree, but we take up for mankind, but who's taking up for Yah? Who's taking up for God? Who's taking up for His commandments? Who's standing on the promises? Who's standing on the restoration? The true restoration, not the false or the political restoration, the true restoration. Who's standing on that? Who's standing on the promises of God? Very few people. Only the remnant are standing up for the word of God. And that's the way it's always been. And Jeremiah, of course, is a great example of that.

So the major points: Jeremiah is publicly humiliated. God's word burns within him. He struggles honestly with discouragement, but God sustains him. A good teaching point for all of us to understand is even faithful servants like Jeremiah, Moses, David, you name it, experience deep discouragement, but God's word continues to compel them. Just like Jeremiah said, if God puts the words in your mouth or my mouth or Jeremiah's mouth, there's nothing we can do about it. It's going to be in our bones to come out. It's going to come out because the Almighty has anointed you or Jeremiah or whoever it is to make those statements to whoever it may be, as a group or as an individual. But my friends, this is a great example of walking the way. Following the Lord is never easy. And Jeremiah, of course, is a great example of someone reaching their calling, their full calling. And look what this man had to endure to reach his redemption, which we will find in chapter 39 tonight.