King Zedekiah and Jeremiah's Ministry

Shalom friends. My name is Chadwick Harvey. Welcome to Faithful Performance. Thank you so much for joining us tonight as we conclude our series on the book of Jeremiah by going through the third king of the series that Jeremiah had to deal with, which is King Zedekiah. King Zedekiah reigned from 597 BC to 586 BC, which is when Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed and the final exile occurred in 586 BC.

Before we commence, a couple of announcements. We are returning back to Israel June 7th through the 17th of next year. We'll be there for the Feast of Shavuot, or Pentecost, during that important counting of the Omer understanding that we go through every year. For more information, you can go to the website at the bottom of the QR code. You can click on the QR code as well for more information. The itinerary for each day, we'll be there 11 days and we'll be going through all of the historical sites, of course, the Mount of Olives, the Temple Mount, all of the sites of Jerusalem, the Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea. But we'll also go through the prophetic understanding of the Day of the Lord with the biblical scriptures in the promised land at the sites that we go to. The historical sites will turn prophetic, as we all know. People don't remember to understand the timeline of the prophetic timeline from the Mount Megiddo through Jerusalem to the southern Jordan Valley at when Yeshua returns. So that's very important when we look at eschatology, we look at the end of the age. It's very important to know the trajectory of what our Messiah is going to do, our King is going to do. And we're going to walk everyone through that literally in the land, not only historically, but also prophetically as well.

The second thing that I'd like to mention is we do have a website, a new website, faithfulperformance.org. If you haven't connected with us on the site, please go to the site. We've got a lot of information on there for you. We've got all the news articles every day. Our news articles, if you will, that we go through with everybody, of all sorts of articles that tell you what's going on in the Middle East and North Africa. Also, we have a Hebrew calendar on the site as well to tell you what day it is according to the Hebrew Jewish calendar, which I believe God is on. So some people get confused with the dates compared to the Gregorian dates, especially the fall feast days, etc. So please visit us for that as well, the Hebrew calendar. We do have an AI chat as well that you can ask the AI, and it will go to the video if you want my personal opinion about anything or whatever topic. The AI will go to the actual video with a timestamp of whatever topic that one wants my personal opinion on. And there's other gadgets and gadgets and so forth as well. So please visit us on the website as well at faithfulperformance.org and we look forward to connecting with you there. Also, you can sign up for the email letter or whatever, and every video comes out with a transcript for the video, also the video as well. Some people like to read it compared to people listening to audio, so to speak. So we offer both of those, the audio and also the transcript as well, if you sign up for the website. Also, understand that it's very encrypted, so it's very private. It's encrypted, your email is, so you won't be hacked or anything like that with your email and that sort of thing, so we made sure of that.

But tonight, my friends, we're going to go through the bottom section or the last section of the book of Jeremiah, a very important section. And we did it, if you're not familiar with the series that we're doing, we did it with the reign of the kings. Jeremiah's book is not written in order. So if we look at it from the reign of each king that he had to deal with, we get more of an accurate chronological understanding or prophetic timeline of how God deals with people, especially in the land of Israel or the promised land. There's very specific rules that we have to follow to live in the promised land. So Jeremiah goes through that, and we see all of God's attributes, you know, from Jeremiah chapter 1 to all the way to Jeremiah chapter 39, which is when Jerusalem, the fall of Jerusalem. We see all of God's attributes that he gives the people. The patience that he has, the longsuffering that he has, the call to repentance, the mercy, the grace, the love. But at the same time, once the prophets go for a certain amount of time and warn the people, if they do not repent, then here comes destruction, and we see that attribute of the Almighty as well. So the book of Jeremiah will give us all of God's attributes on how he deals with the people in the land and the requirements, the standards that we have to understand, or bad things are going to happen. And so we're going to relate it in history, and then we'll correlate it to today as well, as we see some of the same things going on in the promised land that were going on at the time of Jeremiah's ministry and what he warned the people would come upon the people and the land.

Remember that God anointed him. He touched his lips and he put the words in Jeremiah's mouth. So whenever we read these hardcore understandings in the book of Jeremiah, please understand that this is God's words, thus sayeth the Lord. So when we read these hardcore sayings, this is what the Almighty told, commanded Jeremiah to speak in front of all the people. So we have to have the heart right, heart position, not only towards people but also towards Yahweh and what he commands and his commandments and the understanding of what is required to stay in the land. We have to understand that because what we're seeing today goes into that with the Mosaic covenant. People forget about the Mosaic covenant and the covenant that is required in the promised land to keep, or the land will vomit the people out. We've seen that happen throughout many empires, including the Jewish people, but also many other empires as well, once they are in the promised land. So the Mosaic covenant is only for the Jewish people in the land. It's not for any other empire. But what I am saying is the land will vomit the people out and the empires out as well, as we've seen throughout history.

So the book of Jeremiah, as we conclude it tonight, we're going to see the finality of God's anger and his wrath upon the people who were disobedient, who did not listen to the call to repentance, who openly rejected the word of God. And then here comes destruction through what God raised up, his servant Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon. So we went through that in Jeremiah chapter 25, which was very important in King Jehoiakim's reign, the last video, and warned the people that what was going to come to the people if they did not repent. What's so beautiful about the book of Jeremiah and God's attributes is he warned them to the last minute. And we're going to read that tonight. King Zedekiah could have repented at the last day, before Nebuchadnezzar came, and God would have turned Nebuchadnezzar back, but he did not. His pride and his ego and the pressure of the politicians of the day and the religious leaders of the day, he could not do it. And then they were judged tremendously for that.

So we're going to read this book. It's going to conclude. There is a lot of chapters in this. We're going to try to work through them as quickly as possible, but as thoroughly as possible, to get the understanding of how God deals with people in the promised land, his heart for the land, his commandments, and also the love of the people as well. So with that being said, my friends, we're going to start with chapter 20. But before we do, we need to understand Zedekiah's reign was from 597 to 586 BC. That's super important because what we were doing on this series is showing people the three kings that Jeremiah had to deal with. The first king was Josiah, who was a righteous king. He made a lot of reforms, took down some of the high places, all of these things. But the people did not want to follow King Josiah and his reforms. So he reigned, or Jeremiah's time with Josiah was from 627 BC to 609 BC. And then 609 BC to 598 BC is when King Jehoiakim reigned, and he had to deal with him. And that was the open rejection of God's word. They were openly rejecting Jeremiah and God, the kings, the people were. And then here comes King Zedekiah in 597 BC all the way to the destruction of Jerusalem and the final exile of the people in 586 BC.

If one's not familiar with the exiles, there were three exiles that Nebuchadnezzar did. It started in 605 BC with Daniel and his three friends. That was the first exile. And then 598 BC, I believe, was the second exile, which was when Ezekiel the prophet was taken along with other captives. And then we'll see in 586 BC the rest of the exile and also the destruction of the temple and also Jerusalem as well. So that's kind of where we were going with the series, my friends. If you didn't catch the first two videos, that's the first king and the second king that Jeremiah dealt with. And now we're on the third king that Jeremiah dealt with, which is King Zedekiah. And again, he reigned from 597 to 586 BC. So this is the section of the series is the fall of Jerusalem, but also the promise of restoration. It's super important. That's why we read it in the order that we do because now we're going to see in this section of the series, in this king, that Jeremiah pronounces the time of Jacob's trouble, Jeremiah 30, for future tense. He also proclaims the new covenant, Jeremiah 31. He also confirms the new covenant and the restoration in Jeremiah 32, Jeremiah 33. So amongst all of the bad, hardcore stuff that God pronounced over the people, he left the people with restoration hope, with the hope of restoration, with the hope of redemption, at the end of the age. It's very clear when he does that. So this is an awesome ending, if you will, to an unholy thing, if you will, with the people being exiled, captivity, all of these things. It does leave us with a glimpse of hope instead of just total destruction.

So with that being said, let's go through this with the heart posture of God, the heart posture of Jeremiah, and look what Jeremiah had to deal with with the last king that he dealt with. His ministry was about 40 years. This is the last 17 to 18 years of that ministry that he had to deal with King Zedekiah. So with that being said, we'll begin here with chapter number 20.