Two Baskets of Figs and God's Discipline

In Jeremiah chapter 24: "The Lord showed me, and there were two baskets of figs set before the temple of the Lord, after Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had carried away captive Jehoiachin the son of Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, and the princes of Judah, with the craftsmen and the smiths, from Jerusalem, and had brought them to Babylon." So he's talking about the second exile under Jehoiakim, in 598 BC. And he has two baskets of figs. One basket had very good figs, like the figs that are first ripe, and the other basket had very bad figs, which could not be eaten, they were so bad. "Then the Lord said to me, 'What do you see, Jeremiah?' And I said, 'Figs, the good figs, very good, and the bad, very bad, which cannot be eaten, they are so bad.' Again, the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 'Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Like these good figs, so will I acknowledge those who are carried away captive from Judah, whom I have sent out of this place for their own good into the land of the Chaldeans. For I will set My eyes on them for good, and I will bring them back to this land, and I will build them and not pull them down. I will plant them and will not pluck them up. Then I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the Lord; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to Me with their whole heart.'"

How beautiful is this? But it's going against common how we think in real life, right? He says for those who do go under the yoke of the king of Babylon, if you will, who goes into captivity, but He will look upon them for good. And He will bring them back into the land. So even amongst the anger and the wrath that God had for the people of disobedience, He still talks about restoration. Why? Because of the Abrahamic covenant, the Davidic covenant, and the new covenant, which Jeremiah talks about here going forward. He's about His everlasting covenant. So even though He's mad in His wrath with the people, there's always a remnant that will be pulled back into the land of Israel because of the Abrahamic covenant. Once you get into the land by the Abrahamic covenant, the promise to the Jewish descendants, then you have to obey the Mosaic covenant to stay in the land. And that's what people forget, even in the land of Israel right now, is yes, of course, the Abrahamic covenant, they have the right to the land, but to stay in the land, they have to obey Moses, or God, and what He told Moses. So I think that's pretty common. You know, we all know this, but that's why it's so astonishing that we're seeing these things that are going down in the promised land that Jeremiah had to deal with as well, is because it's all in Moses. He carries you back to Moses about the blessings and the curses. Choose life, not death. So Jeremiah is going to bring the people back to Moses because that was the job that God anointed him for as a prophet, is thus sayeth the Lord, go back to what I told Moses about staying in the land of Israel.

So for the good figs, those were the ones who didn't have the pride, the ego, that were going to go fall under the captivity of Babylon and look at the blessings that they were going to have. "For I will set My eyes on them for good, and I will bring them back into the promised land. I will build them and not pull them down. I will plant them and not uproot them. Then I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the Lord, and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to Me with their whole heart." And we will know when that will be once we get through this video tonight.

"As for the bad figs, which cannot be eaten, they are so bad, surely thus says the Lord, so will I give up Zedekiah the king of Judah, his princes, and the residue of Jerusalem, those who remain in this land, and those who dwell in the land of Egypt. I will deliver them to trouble into all the kingdoms of the earth for their harm, to be a reproach and a byword, a taunt and a curse in all the places where I will drive them. And I will send the sword, the famine, and the pestilence among them until they are consumed from the land that I gave to them and their fathers."

So, my friends, there's two different ways. There's the good figs, fall underneath the Babylon, surrender, if you will, which today goes against the ways that we do things today and back then as well. And then the bad figs are the ones who have the pride, who want to fight the king of Babylon, who want to go to Egypt, who want to put their faith in other foreign nations that we will get to as well. So my friends, there's two different ways. Once God gets to this point, the judgment was going to occur no matter what for 70 years. However, it was up to them whether that 70 years was going to be a little bit lighter or a little bit heavier. Well, obviously they chose the heavier side with the fall of Jerusalem. So we can get from today's understanding, we can get a lot of revelation to being the good figs as well. That's not saying follow under the king of Babylon. That's just saying to recognize when we're out of alignment in the promised land and to clean up the land and to repent and all of these things that we're seeing in the land that Jeremiah calls out. We've gone through it on the previous two videos. He calls out all of these things. And again, unfortunately, we're seeing these things today in the promised land. And I just don't truly understand it. I do understand it because it's biblical prophecy, but at the same time, if we're reading the Torah, if we're reading Moses every single weekend, then we should understand that we're out of alignment over in the promised land with all of these things that we've discovered in the first two videos, with the homosexuality, with the abortion, the free abortion, the idols, the false gods, the innocents being killed in the promised land, etc., etc. I mean, there's the breaking of the Shabbat, the breaking of the Shmita, etc., etc. So again, we've discussed all of these things that Jeremiah calls out himself in 597 BC and 609 BC and 627 BC, warning the people to behave better or the king of Babylon was going to come down. And we're going to see the same understanding with the time of Jacob's trouble. We're in the same position now. God's warning His people. He always has His prophets over there warning the people. I don't believe they're listening. And again, then we're going to get into the time of Jacob's trouble, the last seven years, and then it's going to be bad stuff. And He's going to bring a Nebuchadnezzar down. People know it as the Antichrist, but really it's a military commander. It's not just a political antichrist, it's just whatever smooth whatever it may be politician. It's going to be a military commander. He's going to rock Egypt, he's going to rock Libya, he's going to rock Sudan, he's going to rock Judah, he's going to rock Syria, he's going to rock all of it. And that's why I tell people another Nebuchadnezzar is going to come. People have the wrong interpretation of who the Antichrist is and what he's going to be. He's going to be Nebuchadnezzar. He's going to do exactly what Nebuchadnezzar did. And we've shown that through the biblical prophets. And we're going to keep showing that so people can recognize when that military leader comes on the scene, which should be obvious to everybody who knows theology and eschatology. But there will be brothers and sisters who will not know this, that we need to help them understand to be the good figs and not the bad figs.

So the theme of this chapter, obviously, is the two baskets of figs, one good, one bad. Jeremiah sees two baskets. The major points that we have is the exiles taken to Babylon are the good figs. God will restore them to the land and their descendants. Those remaining in Jerusalem become the bad figs because they refuse correction through their pride. A good teaching point: Sometimes God's discipline is actually His mercy. So think about that. Sometimes God's discipline is actually His mercy to get us to repent. Pretty amazing.