WWUTT 2414 Cursed to Foreign Gods in Foreign Lands (Jeremiah 16:1-21)

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The Lord God said to the Jews, through the prophet Jeremiah, because you have worshiped foreign gods, you're not going to be able to live on my land anymore.

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I'm going to send you into a foreign land, and you can worship those gods there, when we understand the text. This is

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When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the Word. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, we feature

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New Testament Study, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday.

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Now here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. Jeremiah chapter 16 is where we are today, where God continues to speak through the prophet

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Jeremiah of the judgment that he is going to bring against Judah. They had rebelled against God and worshiped false gods.

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They went after the ways of the pagans around them. So in the chapter we're reading today, God is going to say to them, fine, you want to worship these false gods?

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You're not going to be able to do it on my land. I'm going to send you into a foreign land. You want to worship pagan gods?

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You'll do it in a pagan land. And that's part of this judgment that God is bringing upon them, with this enemy that will come against them, the

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Chaldeans, and exile them, drive them out of the land that God had given to them, into this foreign place.

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But it's in this same chapter. God is going to promise a restoration for Israel, and that restoration will be even greater than the exodus from Egypt.

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Let me begin by reading verses 1 through 9 here of chapter 16. Hear the word of the

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Lord. The word of the Lord came to me. You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place.

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For thus says the Lord concerning the sons and daughters who are born in this place, and concerning the mothers who bore them, and the fathers who fathered them in this land.

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They shall die of deadly diseases. They shall not be lamented, nor shall they be buried.

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They shall be as dung on the surface of the ground. They shall perish by the sword and by famine, and their dead bodies shall be food for the birds of the air, and for the beasts of the earth.

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For thus says the Lord. Do not enter the house of mourning, or go to lament or grieve for them.

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For I have taken away my peace from this people, my steadfast love and mercy, declares the

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Lord. Both great and small shall die in this land. They shall not be buried, and no one shall lament for them, or cut himself, or make himself bald for them.

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No one shall break bread for the mourner to comfort him for the dead, nor shall anyone give him the cup of consolation to drink for his father or his mother.

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You shall not go into the house of feasting to sit with them, to eat and drink.

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For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I will silence in this place, before your eyes and in your days, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride.

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Sometimes God will tell a prophet to do something, and his conduct, his behavior, the way that he carries himself, is likewise going to be a sign of the judgment that God is bringing upon them.

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You might remember Isaiah being told to walk around naked for three years, and that was supposed to be a prophecy concerning the way that those who were in Egypt would be driven out of their land.

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They would be naked and in chains. Jeremiah here is being told not to marry.

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He's not to marry because this is going to be a sign of how God has removed blessing from Judah.

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Oftentimes in the paintings, you see Jeremiah as an old man, right? Can you remember like the classic paintings and those pictures of Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, how he's all so very sorrowful, but he's also a very old man.

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Well, Jeremiah was very young when God first spoke to him and had him be a prophet, especially going to Anathoth and speaking to his father and his brothers and the other people that lived there at Anathoth.

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So sometimes we don't think of that regarding Jeremiah, that he was actually a young man and was not yet married.

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So part of this that God is giving to Jeremiah is that he's not to be married, and his not marrying is going to be a sign to Judah of the kind of judgment that God is bringing upon the land.

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This is also to spare Jeremiah the struggles and the trials that are going to come.

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If you'll remember in 1 Corinthians 7, the apostle Paul says, I wish that you would remain as I am and that you would remain unmarried.

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And he says to the Corinthians, it's not that marriage is bad, I just want to spare you. The difficulty of the things that are to come.

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And as we've read that in context, as we've studied that even here on this podcast, talking about how there was going to be great tribulation in the land with the kind of judgments that the

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Caesars were going to bring upon the Christians. And it wasn't just what happened at the end of the 60s or in 70

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AD, it's even what continued beyond that for the rest of the 1st century and on to the 4th.

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It wasn't until Constantine that he ended the violence that was against Christians that everything started to settle down.

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So the apostle Paul is saying to the church there, it's better for you to not marry and not have children because I want to spare you some of the trials that are on the way.

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In this particular case, God telling Jeremiah not to marry, it's a sign for the people, but it's also

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God's mercy toward Jeremiah that he would not have to go through the trouble of seeing even his own wife and children being mistreated in the midst of the exile that was to come.

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So let me start here again at the top of the chapter. And again, we have God promising judgment against Judah in verses 1 -13, and then a promise to restore them in verses 14 -21.

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We'll get to that before the end of the lesson here. So in verse 2, God saying to Jeremiah, You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place.

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And again, that's specific to Jeremiah. This is not God saying to all of Judah that you're not to get married and have sons and daughters anymore.

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As a matter of fact, later on, I believe this is chapter 29, same place where we have the famous Jeremiah 29 -11, but it's in that chapter that God also says to Judah that they are to take wives.

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And get wives for your sons, get husbands for your daughters. From within Judah, not from the pagans.

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But marry, be given in marriage, and as you pray for the welfare of your captors, you will be blessed as well.

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God's intention was to restore them back to the land and of course, they will have children that will come out of the exile with them into the new land that will populate the promised land once again.

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So God's encouragement to them later is to take husbands and wives and to have children, and then you will move from this place back into the land that God has promised you.

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So it's not that he's saying to all of Judah, you can't take spouses and you can't have children.

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Again, this is specific to Jeremiah. And it's supposed to be a sign to the rest of Judah of the kind of judgment that God is bringing.

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This is a symbol. And these kinds of messages were intended to shock the people into repentance.

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If they saw that a prophet was told that he wasn't to marry, then they recognize oh wow, blessing has been removed from the land.

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So that they would be convicted of heart and that they would repent. But we know that is not the reaction that the people have.

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So then verse 3, For thus says the Lord concerning the sons and daughters who are born in this place, and concerning the mothers who bore them, and the fathers who fathered them in this land.

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Talking about the promised land, they're still there. They shall die of deadly diseases. They shall not be lamented, nor shall they be buried.

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They shall be as dung on the surface of the ground. They shall perish by the sword and by famine, and their deadly bodies shall be food for the birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth.

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Not deadly bodies, but dead bodies. This is the severity of the judgment that God is bringing.

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This people, when they come into the land, most of you are going to be exiled, but many are going to be killed. And those who are born in the land, this is the way that they are going to be treated.

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And no one is going to have any regard for you. Where God is saying, they will be killed and not be lamented.

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Meaning there's no other land around Israel that is really wringing their hands over what's going to happen to Judah.

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Oh, Judah was conquered by the Chaldeans. Oh, woe is us. And they covered themselves with sackcloth and ashes and they mourn for the judgment that came upon Judah.

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That's not the way that the people were going to be. Most of the lands, most of the nations around Judah did not like Judah.

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Lo and behold, that still seems to be the case today. All of the enemies that Israel has in that part of the world.

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And God had also promised that the perspective of those nations was going to be that when this judgment came upon Judah they were going to say, the nations were going to say, look at this people who did not honor their

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God and the kind of judgment that God brought upon them. So it was even in this, God would be glorified.

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Going on into verse 5, for thus says the Lord, do not enter the house of mourning or go to lament or grieve for them for I have taken away my peace from this people, my steadfast love and mercy, declares the

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Lord. So again, telling Jeremiah not to mourn. And why was he not to mourn? Because God had removed his peace from this people.

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He was not to go to funerals. He was not to put on mourning garments. Both great and small shall die in this land,

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God says. They shall not be buried and no one shall lament for them or cut himself or make himself bald for them.

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You'll remember that when Job had lost his family and all of his property, he sat on the ground with a shaved head covered in sackcloth and ashes.

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He also cut himself with a pot shirt. Now, the reason he cut himself was because he had boils and they were very, very painful.

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And so the way that he would try to satisfy that itch was to cut himself with the pot shirt. But even cutting was a sign of mourning.

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You felt so much grief that you tried to alleviate the emotional pain by causing yourself physical pain.

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You may have known somebody who has reacted this way as a sign of their great grief.

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Verse 7. No one shall break bread for the mourner to comfort him for the dead, nor shall anyone give him the cup of consolation to drink for his father or his mother.

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There's not going to be any peace. There won't be any resolve for the sorrow that people will feel over the kind of judgment that will come.

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You shall not go into the house of feasting. So you can't go into the house of mourning and now God says there also will not be any merriment in the land.

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You shall not go into the house of feasting to sit with them to eat or to drink. For thus says the

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Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, behold, I will silence in this place before your eyes and in your days, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.

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Anything that is jovial, anything that expresses happiness and glee,

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God was going to put an end to in the land. There would be no cause for rejoicing because of how severe and oppressive this judgment was going to be.

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And furthermore, saying that your eyes will see this in your days.

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Remember, a lot of judgments were made through the prophet Jeremiah, or sorry, this is Jeremiah. A lot of judgments were made through Isaiah as well, but some of those judgments were going to be long after Isaiah was gone.

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God is saying here these judgments are right at the door. This is on the way.

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You will see it in your days. This is not some future generation. It's going to happen to yours. Hezekiah was told of the judgment that was going to come upon the land and it was said to him that his sons, his family, it would come from his loins.

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They would see this kind of judgment. They would be driven out because of the arrogance that Hezekiah had demonstrated before God.

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But Hezekiah's attitude to that was, yeah, well, it happens to a future generation. It's not going to happen to me.

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Everything's going to be fine in my days. And that was not only Hezekiah's reaction, but the people's reaction to these kinds of things as well.

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Here, God is saying through Jeremiah, no, this is happening now. It's real and you're going to see it in your days.

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Verse 10, and when you tell this people all these words and they say to you, why has the

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Lord pronounced all this great evil against us? What is our iniquity? What is the sin that we have committed against the

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Lord, our God? Then you shall say to them, because your fathers have forsaken me, declares the

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Lord, and have gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them and have forsaken me and have not kept my law and because you have done worse than your fathers, for behold every one of you follows his stubborn evil will, refusing to listen to me.

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Therefore, I will hurl you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.

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And see, that in itself is a judgment, that God would turn them over to their own depraved minds to do what ought not to be done.

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You want to worship false gods? Fine, but you do it somewhere else, not on my land. He's going to drive these people out into the foreign lands from which these foreign gods came, and you can worship those foreign gods there.

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And this is also a sign that God is no longer with them. That their hearts would not even incline themselves towards seeking after Yahweh and honoring

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Him and following His law. Instead, they're going to be as the pagans that they are subject to.

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And of course, they will perish in judgment right along with those pagan people when God brings

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His judgment against them. So you see how foolish and stubborn the people are.

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They don't even understand why this punishment is coming against them. They say, why has God brought this great judgment against us?

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What is our iniquity? Well, you worshiped false gods. God has to tell them that.

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He has to say, you were not worshiping me. You were not keeping my law. You had forsaken me, and you've even done worse than your fathers have done.

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And so here's the judgment that is coming upon you. You're going to go into foreign lands and serve foreign gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.

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Now that would be an utterly hopeless end if the chapter were to just end right there. If the book of Jeremiah were to end right there.

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But there is actually much great news that is coming up in this book. And we see some of it even here in the remainder of chapter 16.

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We still have more to talk about regarding Judah's sin next week when we get to chapter 17.

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But by the grace and mercy of God, we have a little glimmer of hope here in verses 14 to 21.

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So let me start reading here in verse 14. As the

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Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt, but as the

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Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them, for I will bring them back to their own land that I gave to their fathers.

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So this is demonstrating that the judgment that God is going to bring upon them is not going to be total. It's not going to be absolute in that the

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Jews will completely perish and be wiped off the face of the earth. That isn't God's intention.

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And this gives so much more meaning to Jeremiah 29 .11 when we get there. For I know the plans

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I have for you, declares the Lord, a plan to prosper and not to harm you, to give you a hope and a future.

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Well, even right here, we see God laying out the outcome of that.

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I'm not going to utterly wipe you out in this land. There is still a hope and a future that I have in store for you.

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Now, of course, the people that that was spoken to, Jeremiah 29 .11, they wouldn't even see the result of the thing that God was promising.

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So it's not about, hey, you're going to get all your hopes and dreams. He's speaking collectively to the Jews, not necessarily to every individual person.

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But again, we see here how God is going to promise their restoration, and the restoration will be so incredible that it will be greater than when

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God brought them out of Egypt and gave them the promised land. A day is coming in which you will no longer say, this is the people that God rescued from Egypt.

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You're going to say this is the people that God rescued from Babylon and from the Medes and the Persians.

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Verse 16. Behold, I am sending for many fishers, declares the Lord, and they shall catch them.

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And afterward, I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill and out of the clefts of the rocks.

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For my eyes are on all their ways. They are not hidden from me, nor is their iniquity concealed from my eyes.

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But first I will doubly repay their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted my land with carcasses of their detestable idols and have filled my inheritance with their abominations.

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Verse 19. O Lord, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge in the day of trouble, to you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth and say, our fathers have inherited nothing but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit.

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Can man make for himself gods? Such are not gods.

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Now notice something about that. This is written as a song. Verses 19 and 20.

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It's given that poetic form to it. And who is this that is speaking to God?

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O Lord, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge in the day of trouble, to you shall the nations come. This is

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Jeremiah that's speaking, but he's speaking of people from all over the world. To you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth and say, our fathers have inherited nothing but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit.

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Even from the pagans, from the Gentiles, there's going to be this awareness, this realization that our paganism is nothing.

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It profits us nothing. We gain nothing. These gods are not even really gods.

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What do they give to us? And so verse 20. Can man make for himself gods?

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Such are not gods. It's like the Apostle Paul talking to the Corinthians.

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We know that an idol is an empty thing. There's nothing to an idol. I remember the illustration my dad would give when he would preach and he would talk about the idols that we worship.

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He would have, you know, a suit on and have a suit jacket. He'd set a microphone stand out there. He'd take his suit jacket off and hang it on the microphone stand.

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He said, there, there's your idol. It's an empty suit. That's all it is. This thing that you put your trust in and you believe grants you happiness and you think that you need to have to feel fulfilled and there's nothing to it.

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It's empty. It's emptiness. And ultimately you will feel as that false god if you continue to give yourself to it.

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You will feel empty. You will feel completely unsatisfied. These gods are not gods.

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Man cannot make for himself gods. The whole concept is absurd. How does man make a god to grant him things?

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The whole notion is just absurd and that's sin. Sin is absurd. Sin makes us do really stupid things.

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But verse 21, the very last verse of this chapter here, therefore behold I will make them know.

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This once I will make them know my power and my might and they shall know.

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They, the nations, the people who come to seek the Lord God they shall know that my name is

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Yahweh. In the English standard from which I'm reading they shall know my name is the

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Lord. But that's the name. The Tetragrammaton. They shall know my name is

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Yahweh. And this is going to go throughout the earth. Nations from all over will come to God and they will come to him through the promise that God is fulfilling through his people

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Judah. The coming of the Messiah. And when Jesus comes, as he says in the

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Gospel of John, he will gather all people to himself. People from all over the world will come to Jesus Christ.

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And so the church today, made up of every tribe, tongue, and nation on earth. How was

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God going to reconcile the Gentiles to himself even? Gentiles and Jews together? He was going to do this by faith in Jesus Christ who died for our sins and rose again from the dead.

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Whoever believes in him will not perish under God's judgment but have everlasting life.

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Heavenly Father we thank you for what we have read here and I pray that we see the urgency of the times.

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We understand the call of the hour as we had read previously this week in the

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Gospel of Luke. Know what time it is. Know the difference between right and wrong. Today is the day of salvation.

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The right thing is to turn from sin to the Lord Jesus Christ and live. So let that be the conviction in our hearts to put away sin and everything that so easily entangles as said in Hebrews 12 and run with endurance the race that is set before us looking to Jesus the author and the perfecter of our faith.

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But as these times are growing short, as we know the judgment of God is coming soon may this also put before us an urgency to share the

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Gospel with others so that they too may put faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and live. It's in Jesus name that we pray.

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Amen. This has been When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabriel Hughes. For all of our podcasts, episodes, videos, books, and more visit our website at www .utt

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.com If you'd like to submit a question to this broadcast or just send us a comment email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com

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and let your friends know about our ministry. Join us again tomorrow as we grow together in the study of God's word when we understand the text.