Australian Bible Church –

 

A CONTINUATION OF THE ORIGINAL THRUST AND BASE

OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF AUSTRALIA

ON BIBLICAL LINES …   

June 7, 2009

Jeremiah 36-38

 

HISTORY THAT HIDES A PARABLE

A PARABLE THAT REVEALS WISDOM

For a fuller presentation, see this link.

 

Part II

Last Sunday, we proceeded to ponder the times of recession and futility in the day of Jeremiah, watching carefully the day of Jehoiakim and his boldness, cutting the word of God and then casting it into the fire. This proved a prelude to something similar happening to his own soul, except that on this earth, it took the form of his being captured and left to die exposed to the elements, the death of a donkey. If possible, worse was to follow for his brother, another son of the wisely honoured reformer, Josiah, namely King Zedekiah. If King Jehoiakim was blatant, then Zedekiah was latent; and if the one was kicking like an ass, the other was tricky. It seems the results were not different in the end; but on the way there is much to learn.

In this series, the procedure of notes is followed, interspersed with exposition.

 

IV The New KING VACILLATES, DOOM  ENSUES 37-38

a) Another son of Josiah, now called Zedekiah, reigns.

b) He asks Jeremiah to pray for him, but does not change his ways - 37:1-6

c) Egypt's departure from a belligerent posture is not deliverance, but merely a prelude to the destruction, which is to come from another source: Babylon 37:7-10. Therefore, do not construe mercy as toleration, far less encouragement to continue error. Be thankful and stop provocation.

d) God declares the super-circumstantial certainty of coming judgment: if circumstances began to distance, it would come in any case. In fact, this would be in a way so vivid that it deserves close study for its impact! Why wait till such a time: act in good time, when challenged! If the invading army, each one of them,  lay wounded, they would still arise and come to take the corrupted kingdom of Israel as it then was  -37:10.

e) Jeremiah, falsely accused, is seized, struck by the princes and imprisoned, increasingly appearing as a type of Christ – 37:13-16. It happened thus: Jeremiah had a gap in time, when Egypt went before Babylon came to continue its assault. He used it to go to claim nearby land in Benjamin. Misconstrued, this action led, with the aggrieved background of the army towards him, to his arrest, assault and imprisonment. In parallel with Christ are several points at the human level.

First, Jeremiah went out to claim property. Christ came into this world, to claim HIS property ("He came to His own and His own did not receive Him, but to those who did receive Him, to them He gave the authority to become children of God" - John 1:11-13). Those receiving Him now doubly His, born not of will nor blood but of God.

Secondly, in so doing Christ was also smitten, imprisoned, falsely accused, and subjected to vileness.

Thirdly, Jeremiah's purchased property would remain intact through the occupation (Jeremiah 32:7-15), just as Christ's 'property', His children, would be intact through history till He comes!

Indeed, a New Covenant was coming (32:40ff., cf. 31:31ff.), and it has come.

f) After a prison term, he is summoned by the King, to whose enquiry - 'Is there any word from the Lord,'  he replies: There is: to the King of Babylon's hand, you will be delivered. Then he expostulates concerning his wrongful imprisonment – 37:17-18. Here is fearless fidelity, later linked with continuing concern even for the King! (38-30!).

g) The King, ameliorating his treatment a little, puts him now in the prison court – 37:17-21.

h)  The prophet now urges on those who hear, the doom which to come to those who stay in the besieged city – Jeremiah 38:1-3.

i) The princes seek therefore, that he be put to death -38:4.

j) The King wilts, like a Pilate later,  and Jeremiah is lowered into a miry pit.

k) Ebed-Melech rescues him, by appealing to the King (he not even being a Jew, but an Ethiopian, here gives a lesson in being kind to those of another race).

l) The King seeks now a frank interview with Jeremiah - 38:14. He wants to question the prophet.

m) Jeremiah's answer is parallel, though inverse, to something Christ said, seen in Luke 22:67-68 -  38:17-18.

The prophet of the Lord declared that

1)     if he answered the King, declaring the only godly answer - that he must surrender to Babylon and accept the Lord’s discipline: would he not kill him! and
 

2)     if he gave him advice, the King would not listen to Him.

Jesus Christ, when asked of His identity by the hostile, multipartite group in authority, the aristocrats of ecclesiastical bureaucracy, answered:

1) “If I tell you, you will by no means believe.”

2) “And if I also ask you, you will by no means answer Me or let Me go.”

Then like a flower bursting in Spring, with exuberant force, He declared: “Hereafter the Son of Man will sit on the right hand of the power of God.” Fearless, He confronted.

The two are close, Christ paralleling rather closely the word of Jeremiah, and applying it majestically.

In point 2: If Jeremiah gave advice, which the King could not stand, since it would involve surrender: then he would not listen. In parallel, if Jesus the Christ engaged in dialogue, seeking to elicit from them, what would bring to them deliverance and salvation, they would be as if dumb, and not let Him go. They would not heed, not hear, being spiritually deaf.

Again, in point 1: If Jeremiah gave the necessary answer, which the King could not STAND, because of what it was, the entire coverage of sin, the King would kill him. In parallel, if Christ told them who He was, identifying Himself, the entire coverage of salvation, they would not receive it, this being a crucial hostility in their hearts. They would not BELIEVE in HIM. HENCE, declaring His words to be blasphemy (as they did), they would kill Him (as they did). In other words, the implication is this: that just as King Zedekiah viewed it as a national surrender to give up the city, so the priests and authorities just could not give up their lives, surrendering the city of sin, its corporate follies, together with their own hearts. To them, believing in Christ, the liberator, was intolerable: so instead they mocked Him instead as a hostile force, imperiling their nation.

Let us expand this a little.

The two are close, Christ paralleling rather closely the word of Jeremiah, and applying it majestically, as the divine Logos, come to provide salvation to a sinning race.

In point 1 for the prophet: If Jeremiah gave advice, which the King could not stand; for it involved surrender, and he would not believe him. Why ? It was because in his majesty, he COULD bring himself to to face neither the reality of his sins and their fruit, nor the nation with the results of folly (as when, oblivious of divine guidance, he had rebelled against the King of Babylon, choosing HIS time for deliverance, not the Lord's for release from their discipline). He was set in pride and stricken with fear at the same time, it seems.

To rid himself in ruthless and drastic style, cornered and corrupt, from the realities of life, Zedekiah would seek to obliterate the prophet, as Jehoiakim had sought to obliterate the word of God. Two different approaches of two different kings would thus have a parallel result, by different roads leading to the same end.

In point I, for the Lord, set out above in parallel for the response of Jesus Christ in His day on this earth, we find the Lord simply this: If I tell you, you will not believe. In fact, he went further: You will BY NO MEANS BELIEVE. In other words, their hearts were set, as was Zedekiah in his day, and nothing would move them from their passion in pollution, their career in corruption. Disbelieving, they would brand Him an imposter, not the Messiah, and hence hand out, most conveniently, the death penalty as for example in terms of Deuteronomy 13:3-5. The speed of this action is seen all too clearly in Mark 14:62-65. Let us read this.

"But He kept silent and answered nothing.

"Again the high priest asked Him, saying to Him,

      'Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?'

"Jesus said,

      'I am. And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand
      of the Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven."

"Then the high priest tore his clothes and said,

'What further need do we have of witnesses?
You have heard the blasphemy! What do you think?'

"And they all condemned Him to be deserving of death.
Then some began to spit on Him, and to blindfold Him, and to beat Him, and to say to Him, 'Prophesy!'
And the officers struck Him with the palms of their hands."

It was like a Hitleresque blitzkreig, prepared, implemented and bringing ruin with relish.

They had sown all too well (cf. Matthew 27:25). Thereafter the only escape for the people (for Jeremiah was delivered by Babylon, though choosing not to escape, just as Christ was delivered by bodily resurrection, the power that raised others raising Him) was to repent individually. In parallel, the only effectual one for the nation now in our day reaching its dénouement, is repentance that is soon to come in a large measure as explained in an earlier Chapter (Zechariah 12:10ff., Romans 11:25ff.). Nor is this so amazing; for even among the Gentile nations, without repentance for sin, there is no salvation! It is thus to become with increasing obviousness, a universal dénouement!

The authorities faced the wonders of the spiritual world with the deviousness of this one.

The stakes were high: God or NOT GOD. Not God was a name for idols, sources of false worship as in Deuteronomy 32:21. If then Christ be God, they owed Him worship, and would be required to abandon their additives, rather like those now of Roman Catholicism in the Christian realm, to leave their traditions, their corruption and their conveniences. The word of God ALONE would be in charge, and God alone would be the doctrinal authority and lively source of life.

If they did not want this, then He had to be made out to be not God, the very essence of contempt (and so the officers at once set about striking Him and spitting on Him). Hence He would be construed as a deadly sinner in need of immediate execution for His injudicious rambling. The trouble was of course, that His miracles which were not only prodigious in quality and quantity, but seemed unlimited in their majesty and compassion combined, and the entire fit of His life with that required for and indeed specified for the Messiah in Isaiah, Micah and the Psalms, as in Zechariah, down to detail, made such a rejection clearly wanton. Did that ever stop the impassioned! It did not do so this time.

Thus if Christ told them, they would not believe and HENCE would kill Him, as they did. The same is the essence with each, with Christ and with Jeremiah in the pith of the answer to point 1. Its differences lies in the ontological difference: Jeremiah was a man, Christ was as He is, God as man.

 

In point 2, the interpretation takes more thought for Jeremiah. However in substance, it is this: Suppose Jeremiah simply gave the King advice, personal advice such as he had sought. It would of course have to conform to the facts, and it would be that he cease the resistance and surrender. The King would not even listen to that, being fearful of his name, reputation and of mockery, or even worse. Hence he would not of course let this prophet go free, lest become like a dangerous negative propaganda machine in the  interpretation of the beleaguered city. He, the King, for such an act,  might be lynched! He was scared that he would be abused in some way. That is all involved in not listening! and this because of Jeremiah's peculiar status as a national prophet.

With Christ, the answer in its second point, if He asked them what was their response to HIM (not just as with Jeremiah, to a plan), they would not concur or confirm what He presented, and would not let Him go. After all, did not the High Priest Caiaphas declare that it was EXPEDIENT that one Man should die for the people! (John 11:50)!

Was this not in view of the fact that so great was the mustering of the multitude to adore, worship, love, delight in this prophet to end all Old Testament prophets, this Christ, this Messiah, this truth, this power of God, this man of peace, this extraordinary and delightful personality, this man who declared He always did what pleased His Father (John 8:29), that He and His Father were one: that if they did not act to strike Him down, it would be a terrible fate for them. What would this fate be ?

Why, in that case, they thought, "all will believe in Him", and what then ? Having the power of God and His peace, what is that compared with fears about what flesh would do! But passion tends to fashion itself, and to follow its own diatribes. And what then was the result ? Fearful things were done BY the flesh, by Rome and Russia, by Italy and Romanism, by pogroms and concentration camps. So far from murder delivering the nation, it bred masses of murders for it.

Still, that thought of Caiaphas, it is the human estimate so often found. Yet Christ knew what was in the heart of man, we read, and both His words to the priests and Jeremiah's to the King were strikingly perceptive and accurate.

n) God through Jeremiah nevertheless, in His transcendent and abundant mercy, makes an offer of deliverance for King and city, if he surrenders. In this offer to the King, there is seen the endless love of God, even when judgment is sure: for His heart has not changed, and He does not willingly afflict any (Lamentations 3:33). So even to the thief on the Cross, Christ gave pardon.

o) Zedekiah is vacillatory: he states fear of abuse, if he surrenders – perhaps mockery and torture. If delivered to the power of Babylon, and transferred to his people, those who had already left the city, he anticipates calamity. Despite reassurance to the contrary, he capitulates not to Babylon but to fear, only to be tortured by the King of Babylon when, as stated, the city IS taken. So does fear make fools out of those falling to cowardice - 38:17-23. Further, Jeremiah foretold that the King's household would also suffer, unless he surrendered.

This he failed to do, despite the warning. Message, you hurt not only yourself when you become sea-sick with sin, and insist on its continuance, however ambivalently!

p) The King in shame seeks secrecy - 38:24ff.. So does what IS of the light come into it, not hiding in conventional lairs where discrepancy lurks. Light does not hide! It needs neither lairs not liars, true, manifesting truth and of God. Christ, light of this world, shone!

q) Jeremiah remains till liberated by Babylon, staying loyal to his people, even after he was set free; but the Zedekiah’s sons are slain before his eyes, which the King of Babylon then puts out. Seeing what he did not want to see - having hidden from the truth - he is now blinded so that he cannot see, if he would. It is no good playing games with God: truth in heart and spirit is crucial. 

 

V THE HIDDEN PARABLE THAT SPEAKS OPENLY

There were once two kings, sons of the same good king, who fixed a mire and glorified God. One son was a man of action, cutting some of the word of God, and burning more (like a Liberal, in Christian history). He sought to lay hands on the one giving out the word of God, as often enough, did later Liberals those who kept it. The other king was equivocal, dancing  about the word of God (like neo-orthodoxy and those whom it seizes), both imprisoning and pleading with the prophet called to write it, just as neo-orthodoxy imprisoned the minds and pled with the hearts of those who might have kept to the word of God, often illustrating Luke 11:52.

The former king was put in chains for exile, the second (actually the third, but his predecessor came to nothing and was in prison for 37 years in a foreign country) had his sons killed before his eyes, before the  invading conqueror, who put out those eyes. The former died for his evil in presumptuous action; but the latter was literally blinded through inaction. This is a parable for history and its principle is clear. Neither of these 2 kings obeyed the word of God. There are many ways of disobeying: but only one way exists, to obey. Their father held to that way, a brilliant reformer (by name, Josiah), whom God took before the evils of his nation could bring grief to his exuberant, disciplined and fatherly heart.

The Father of spirits loved the father of the 2 kings, who fathered his nation, and gladly gave his life in its defence (II Kings 22:18-20, 23:28-30). The last of the sons saw no more, but was bound for Babylon, the type to the end of the Bible in Revelation 17, of all who toy with truth, and see nothing.