Day 215: Jeremiah 9–11 | Read The Bible In A Year | Bible Study with Commentary by Dr. Manny Arango

Hey Bible nerds, this is Dr. Manny Arango. Welcome to the Bible Department podcast powered by ARMA. We are walking through the entire Bible in a year. You can go to the description or thebibledepartment.com to download a reading plan and join the journey. Welcome to day 215. We are in Jeremiah chapters 9, 10, and 11. We're going to continue and end Jeremiah's famous temple sermon. Much like Jesus is going to go to the temple and get the the money changers out of the temple and kind of rebuke the temple, Jeremiah is going to do the same thing. Since the people are saying, no this temple is going to keep us safe, he literally makes the temple the site of his sermon and he prophesies against the people. That entire segment was started yesterday. We're going to pick it up today. If you have done the reading, then everything I'm going to say is going to make perfect sense. I'm going to give you some context, always going to give you as many nerdy nuggets as I can, and we're going to leave with a timeless truth. If you haven't done the reading yet, go ahead, stop the video, pause the audio, and go read Jeremiah chapters 9, 10, and 11. Chapters 9 and 10 are part of the temple sermon. Chapter 11 is not. And with no further ado, let's dive in. All right, so far, like in the first two days readings, day one was prophecies kind of during the reign of Josiah. Day two was prophecies during the reign of Jehoiakim. So today, I just figured I'd orient us just a little bit and give you kind of a breakdown of the book and talk about Jeremiah just a bit, and then we'll get into some nerdy nuggets. So I'm going to give you a good amount of context, not necessarily context for chapters 9, 10, and 11. You already have context for that. He's at the temple preaching to the people, pointing out their hypocrisy, saying, well, right outside the temple, you are worshiping other gods, and then you think you'd come into this temple and worship Yahweh. It just doesn't work that way, okay? So that's the immediate context for these chapters, but I want to just give you more context for the book of Jeremiah as a whole. All right, so from chapters 1 to 6, Jeremiah is prophesying during Josiah's reign, okay? So remember, Jeremiah is going to prophesy through five kings of Judah, so long ministry from Josiah to Zedekiah, and obviously three kings in the middle. So Jeremiah's ministry is going to last for 42 years, so I just kind of want to give you a rundown because the book is not in chronological order. It's an anthology as opposed to a chronology, and we'll talk about that in the anthology. We'll talk about that in just a little bit. So the prophecies in chapters 1 through 6 are spoken during Josiah's reign, okay? In chapter 7 all the way to chapter 20, okay? From chapter 7 to chapter 20, we've got prophecies during the reign of Jehoiakim, okay? From chapter 21 to chapter 24,

we have prophecies from the reign of King Zedekiah, who is the last king of Judah. 25 carries on from chapter 20, so we're back to Jehoiakim's reign in chapter 25. Chapter 26 to 36 is all over the place in Jehoiakim and Zedekiah's reign. In chapter 37 to 44, this is all Zedekiah's reign and the aftermath of the fall of Jerusalem. Chapter 45 to 51, we've got Jehoiakim's reign, and then chapter 52 actually just functions like an epilogue, which summarizes the fall of Jerusalem and Jehoiachin's release from prison, okay? Jehoiachin, not to be confused with Jehoiakim, okay? All right, so hopefully that gives you a map of the whole book and helps you to understand what's going on. Now, let me actually tell you one of the really, really cool things about the book of Jeremiah. Again, this isn't necessarily super tied to chapters 9 to 11, but more just so the entire book of Jeremiah. So one of the really, really cool things is Jeremiah is one of the only prophets where we get a lot of Jeremiah's life, okay? So the book of Isaiah doesn't have a ton of narrative about Isaiah. However, the book of Jeremiah has a ton of narrative about Jeremiah. And we're actually going to get some of that in chapter 11, which is a part of today's reading. The reason for this is because in Jeremiah 36, there's kind of what we, what we would call the origin story for the written prophecies of Jeremiah. In Jeremiah chapter 36, the voice of the Lord comes to Jeremiah and says, Hey, take the last 20 years of prophecies, poems, essays, and sermons, and create a collection and actually write this stuff down. And so he finds a scribe or employs, hires a scribe by the name of Baruch or Baruch. Some people say Baruch, some people say Baruch. And Baruch starts to collect an anthology of Jeremiah's sermons. But you could tell Baruch really likes Jeremiah a lot like Luke and Paul, right? Like when you read through the book of Acts, it's clear. Like Luke really likes this guy named Paul. So Baruch really likes Jeremiah. And so not only is it an anthology of poetry, prophecies, sermons, and essays, it also reads a bit like a biography. So we get a lot of Jeremiah's life and we get Jeremiah's, you know, persecutions, his

life, his emotions, his anger towards God, his bitterness towards, or his just disdain for the people's sin. We get a lot of that obviously from Jeremiah, but it's because there's a guy named Baruch who I think is helping to put all this stuff together. So that does have bearing on what we're going to talk about today, especially when we get to chapter 11. But a lot of that is just like broad, you know, the book of Jeremiah as a whole context that I think is really, really, really helpful. All right, with the time we've got left, I'm going to try to give you as many nerdy nuggets as possible. As we are looking at Jeremiah chapter 9 through 11, family, the wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos is out now and available everywhere books are sold. Literally today, I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble, or you can go to a Books A Million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. Here we go. First nerdy nugget. We can go to Jeremiah chapter 9 and as you scroll, I kind of want you to get to verse 17. Okay.

Well, let's, let's start with this nerdy nugget. When we say like, hey, Jeremiah is just an emotional prophet. Okay. Like, I want you to have texture for this man's personality. This is it. This is an emotional guy. Jeremiah is also called the weeping prophet. It kind of comes from this right here in tons of other passages, Jeremiah chapter 9, verse 1. That's our first nerdy nugget. Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes, a fountain of tears. I would weep day and night for the, for the slain of my people. Verse two, all that I had in the desert, a lodging place for travelers so that I might leave my people and go away from them for they are all adulterers, a crowd of unfaithful people though. Number one, I want to weep because of you, but I also want to leave. Man, if I had an Airbnb somewhere, I'd go out there, dude, I'd, I'd leave all y'all because you're freaking adulterers and you're unfaithful, but I just want to cry. You hear this? Chapter 9, verse 1. Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes, a fountain of tears. I would weep day and night for the slain of my people. It's just emotional. It's, it's, it's great. You know, we got, we got, we got Drake over here. All right. So, uh, the next thing, okay. Chapter 9, verse 17, it says this, this is what the Lord almighty says. Consider now call for the wailing women to come send for the most skillful of them. So this is a nerdy nugget that I think I can kind of help us with.

They're talking about professional mourners. These are professional grievers. Okay. So there were women who would get hired, uh, to attend funerals, to, to weep. Okay. To mourn. Now that may seem weird to us, but we also have professional cuddlers in our society today. So. before you go and judge in ancient culture. Now, here's the other thing. These people were incredible at their job. So a lot of times these professional mourners get like depicted in movies or, you know, TV shows like The Chosen or whatever. And they're just like, yeah, they're just like wailing and weeping and stuff. And they're being super dramatic. The Bible says, send for the most skillful of them. They're actually not dramatic. It's actually a skill. And the skill was to help the family actually grieve. And so have you ever like seen someone cry and seeing them cry makes you cry? Sometimes when you're in the middle of death, you're also in the middle of shock, like you're in disbelief. And so your emotions are all over the place. And so actually these were really skilled people. No different than a therapist is able to help

unearth certain emotions, unearth certain emotions from you. So these people, these professional mourners kind of get depicted as dramatic, crazy people, but they were far from that. They actually were skillful. They were, there was a utilitarian purpose to what they did, okay? They weren't just there causing a scene and causing a ruckus. They were actually there to help loved ones grieve and mourn and cry and access their emotions. So just wanted to kind of point that out, all right? The next nerdy nugget. So that's two nerdy nuggets so far. The next one, chapter 10, we're gonna see again. Actually, let's stay in verse nine really quick and go to verse 25. Again, this is like, there's not a debate, okay? Verse 25 of chapter nine. Chapter nine, verse 25. The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will punish all who are circumcised only in the flesh. So again, we get this idea of circumcision of the heart versus circumcision of the flesh. This is why when Paul starts saying, a Jew is not a Jew who's only circumcised in the flesh, but a Jew is a Jew who's circumcised in the heart. Paul is being consistent with what is talked about in the Old Testament.

He's not going off. For Paul, in Paul's mind, he is actually living out the most true form of the Hebrew scriptures. He's following the Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures in the most accurate way, okay? So he's not thinking to himself, oh, I'm gonna convert to Christianity. Actually, Paul doesn't have a conversion on the road to Damascus. He actually becomes a real Jew, okay? Because he becomes a true Israelite. So I know that may be a slight nuance, but it's actually really, really helpful because for someone like Paul, he wouldn't have thought of himself as converting from Judaism to Christianity. He would see Christianity as the true form of Judaism. And I know that there may be Jewish people who would be uncomfortable with me saying that, but I'm talking about a Jewish man named Paul and how he saw himself. Paul, the Jew, would have seen Christianity as the natural path that Judaism was on. And he would have seen his actions in keeping with the true interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures. All right, so again, we see the theme of circumcision of the flesh versus circumcision of the heart. Okay, chapter 10, here we go. Jesus is actually going to echo some of this language

in the Olivet Discourse when we get to the Gospels. Verse 17, gather up your belongings and leave the land. You who live under siege, for this is what the Lord says. At this time, I will hurl out those who live in this land. I will bring distress on them so that they may be captured. This is not debatable. This is happening. There is no escaping it. But this like gather up your belongings, like flee to the hills, like get out of here. Jesus is gonna give that same warning because he's gonna know, Jesus is gonna prophesy that the Romans are gonna come and completely defeat Jerusalem and destroy the temple in 70 AD. Jesus didn't say the date, but he prophesied the event. And actually there are Christians who interpreted Jesus's warnings well, and they got out of Jerusalem. They fled to the hills. So Jesus is following in the same trajectory as the Old Testament prophets, Jeremiah being one of them, who's saying, gather up your belongings and leave the land. Okay, like the Babylonians are coming. Not a debate, they are coming. All right, verse 22, okay, of the same chapter. We're just gonna go drop down a couple of verses. Chapter 10, verse 22.

Listen, the report is coming, a great commotion from the land of the North. I will make towns of Judah desolate, a haunt of jackals. Why is the threat coming from the North? Well, because the real threat is actually from the East. Okay, Babylon is East. but there's a desert to the direct east of Israel. And so they've got to go up and around the desert and come from the north to actually invade. Chapter 11. Okay, when we get to chapter 11, we're actually gonna get to some narrative. So you're probably noticing as you're doing the reading, there's way more narrative in Jeremiah than any of the other prophets. And that is because it's anthology, but it's also a little biography, which is really cool. Mini nugget, verse 14, chapter 11, do not pray for those people or offer any plea or petition for them because I will not listen when they call to me in the time of their distrust. So there is no more interceding. Don't plea, don't offer up any petition. Disaster is coming, that is it. Verse 17, the Lord Almighty who planted you has decreed disaster for you because the people of both Israel and Judah have done evil and aroused my anger by burning incense to Baal, done.

Okay, when you get to chapter 11, verse 18, we get a murder plot, like an assassination attempt against Jeremiah, all right? And it's actually from people from his hometown, people of Anathoth or Anathoth. Therefore, this is what the Lord says about the people of Anathoth who are threatening to kill you, saying, do not prophesy in the name of the Lord or you will die by our hands. Why are they trying to kill him? Well, because Jeremiah is saying things that are unpatriotic. This is, again, this is like saying after 9-11, the terrorists were sent by God to judge us for our disobedience. Don't fight back. We don't need to go to war with Iraq or Afghanistan or anybody. We don't need to kill Osama bin Laden. Leave them alone. Actually, Lord, thank you for sending these terrorists. Thank you for giving them the idea to fly planes into the Twin Towers. We deserve it and now we're just gonna repent. This is the most unpatriotic thing you could ever say. And this is, I wanna put into perspective why he would be trying to kill Jeremiah. They're trying to kill this man because what he's saying is anti-Israel. It's anti-Judah.

It's anti-everything that they are believing for. It's the most pessimistic thing that you could ever say. Disaster is certain. We're gonna die. The Babylonians are gonna come. We're gonna go into exile. It's over, it's over. Guys, just wrap it up. Just pack it up. We're done, we're done. But God says, I'll punish them. The young men will die by the sword, their sons and daughters by famine. The guys that try to kill you, look, it's in my hands. Don't seek revenge. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. Not even a remnant will be left to them because I will bring disaster on the people of Anathoth in the year of their punishment. So because they tried to kill you, I am going to judge righteously. I am gonna make sure that the people who tried to kill you are gonna get dealt with. All right, so Jeremiah's just got a hard life. Literally, just whole attempts on his life to try to kill him. All right, this leads us to our timeless truth. I gave you as many Nerdy Nuggets as I could. It's kind of rapid fire Nerdy Nuggets. I want you to go Jeremiah chapter nine, verse 23.

Jeremiah chapter nine, and I want you to go to verse 23. This is our timeless truth for the day. Love this verse. This is what the Lord says. Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this. So there's a thing that we can boast about. We can't boast about our wisdom. We can't boast about our strength. We can't boast about our riches, okay? Those three things right there, we can't boast about those. Wisdom, strength, and riches, can't boast about it. But let the one who boasts boast about this, that they have the understanding to know me, that they have the understanding to know Yahweh, that I am the Lord who exercises kindness, justice, and righteousness on earth for in these I delight, declares the Lord. So many things to take away from that. First of all, God delights in kindness, justice, and righteousness on the earth. Kindness, justice, and righteousness. I've said this, I mean, in so many videos, that we have a polarization, especially in the West, especially in America, between justice and righteousness. And God says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I want you to act just, and I want you to be righteous. And because of our political polarization,

you know, the right really cares about righteousness or morality, and the left says that they care about justice. I'm not convinced, but they say. they care about justice, issues around poverty and immigration. So, and God says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this divide between justice and righteousness, that's not, that's not an idea that comes from the Bible, God is saying, no, I don't want you to have, I don't want you to have sex outside of marriage. I don't want you to, I want you to be moral. I I'm pro-life, like all the stuff that, that would, would, that would define morality, I'm all that. And all the stuff that would define justice, I'm all that. You just gather those things together and where the world has put a divide and where the world's created polarization. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're biblical. We're Bible people. We're not, we're not, we're not in this, we're not of this world. So the world sees these as opposites. We don't. Our Bible says that these things are right next to each other and that God cares about both. And here we go. We're not next. We're not allowed to boast. We don't boast in our wisdom. We don't boast in our strength. We don't boast in our riches. What do we boast in? That we have the understanding to know God, that, that I have enough

understanding to gain more understanding that I've got understanding. And I've got at least enough understanding to know that I don't know God. And now I want to know him. God, I want to know you. And so that's what we boast in. That's a timeless truth. I don't think that's tied to impending doom that the Babylonians are going to bring upon the people of Judah. That's not tied to the pages of scripture. That's forever. Can we boast in the fact that we understand enough to know the Lord, that we exercise kindness, justice, and righteousness along with our God, because that's the stuff that he delights in. That's a timeless truth for the day. I hope that helps you to know God and to walk with him. Tomorrow, we've got day 216. We're going to be in Jeremiah chapters 12, 13, and 14, three chapters of Jeremiah on the docket for tomorrow. Hey, I'm so proud of you, especially if you're on a streak. I love you. I'm so glad we get to do this together. I'll see you right here tomorrow as we continue our trek through the book of Jeremiah, love y'all peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible department podcast. If this episode was helpful, how about you leave a comment, share with a friend and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. To learn more about the show, head to thebibledepartment.com. We'll see you right back here tomorrow.