Jeremiah Chapter 19 "Jeremiah, Prayer, The Potter's Bottle." This Bible
Study is written by Roger Christopherson, and it's
transcription/ location is provided by http://www.theseason.org Studying what is happening in and around Jerusalem in Jeremiah's day is important to us living in this final generation, because it is a type of what we will see when the king of Babylon of the end times is here on earth. That king of course is Satan the Antichrist ruling over his one world religious system. This all gives us knowledge of what we will face very shortly, and that is why we must pay close attention to all those things that happened. Though it was spoken 2500 years ago, it is just as important today as it was then. God is the same yesterday as He is today, and that He will be tomorrow, and you can count on that. Jeremiah 19:1 "Thus saith the LORD, Go and get a potter's earthen bottle, and take of the ancients of the people, and of the ancients of the priests;" This "potter's earthen bottle" is a clay pot. God is telling Jeremiah to get a group of the very wisest men [ancients of the people] that you can find, and bring them all together. This lesson to Jeremiah is a continuation from the last chapter of the potter's wheel. The word "bottle" means more in the Hebrew then what we think of in the English, The word means a pouring out of the bottle. The lesson that Jeremiah is going to give them is that He is about to pour them out of the area, like the water that is poured out of the bottle. Jeremiah 19:2 "And go forth unto the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the east gate, and proclaim there the words that I shall tell thee." When you compare this verse with the east gate of Ezekiel you can tell that there is something worlng in this verse. The valley of Hinnom in the Greek, is the place of the burning. It is the place outside the city's "dung gate", and the valley of Hinnom is the place that Christ uses as the type of hell. This allows people to look at the garbage pit where dead animals and all the trash was burned, and relate it in their fleshly mind to hell. The "east Gate" leads to the valley of Kedron, and across it is the mount of olives, so there must be something wrong with the gates mentioned here. So when we look up the word "East" from the Hebrew manuscripts, and we find that it comes from #2775 in the Hebrew Strong's dictionary. "We see it is a red tile used for scrapping." It is a pottery named for a gate in Jerusalem, and we know that gate as "potters gate", and not the east Gate. The direction that God is giving to Jeremiah is to go down to the potter's gate, for you can not go out the east gate and see the valley of Hinnom. God has instructed Jeremiah to get a clay pot, the symbol of our human flesh bodies, and God is saying fill the bottle with water, and tell the elders, or wise men that the people are the water in the bottle, and I am going to pour them out of the city, just like the water is poured out of the bottle. Remember also that this potters field is the location that the thirty pieces of silver which paid for the blood of Christ, some five hundred years later. That potters field would be used as a burial ground for people whose lives had been shattered, with no loved ones to care for their remains. The lesson that God made from this is that Christ is able to piece those broken lives back together again, before they end up in the potters field. This lesson then looks ahead even to the time of Messiah, the point is that the correct gate is not the "east gate", but the "potters gate". Jeremiah 19:3 "And say, Hear ye the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem; Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, the which whosoever heareth, his ears shall tingle." The message that Jeremiah is giving to all the peoples and races that were in Jerusalem at that time from God. Jeremiah is telling them that God is warning all of them that He shall bring a calamity and affliction on Jerusalem and that when it hits their ears they will be reddened with shame. In the Hebrew text, # 6750 in the Strong's Hebrew dictionary, it says that "their teeth will be chattering with fear." This is what is going to happen to those that refused to listen to the warnings that God has given to the people. This is history of what happened in Jerusalem when king Nebuchadnezzar entered into Jerusalem, and took many captive, and slaughtered many others. It is also prophecy in the spiritual sense of what shall come to pass after Satan the Antichrist enters Jerusalem and has ruled the one world religious system from Jerusalem. This is as it shall be when the Lord Jesus Christ comes at the seventh trump to set up His kingdom for the thousand year Millennium reign. It will happen right at this geographic location, right down to the pottery gate, and the east gate where Christ will enter into Jerusalem. The details of what shall happen on that day is written in the prophesies of Zachariah 14, and on that day a way will be made by God for His own to escape what will come upon the city. But the others, when they see this come to pass a threatening fear will come over them because they will understand how foolish they have been in their deception. When this comes to pass it is to late for them, and the embarrassment will send a shock through them. They will know at that moment that they have been tricked into believing a lie from the false teachers. Jeremiah 19:4 "Because they have forsaken me, and have estranged this place, and have burned incense in it unto other gods, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents;" Jeremiah is reminding them that they have sunk so low in their forms of idolatry. They have turned their backs to God far beyond anything their fathers have done. It is because of this that the city of Jerusalem will be filled with the blood of the innocent. The "blood of innocents" is the blood of their own children, who are innocent in the early youth. Jeremiah 19:5 "They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind:" Baal is Satan's worship place. These altars are places of child sacrifice. God is saying this form of evil I have never required of anyone, I have never spoke it, nor has it ever entered into My mind. What the House of Judah was practicing as being from God, came from the filthy mind of Satan. What is spoken of here is what is called the practice of Molach, and if you are not real careful my freind it will enter your mind also. This is the practice of holding your children to God, not by love, but the fear of hell fire. Instead of your children growing up to love God as a God that cares and loves for His own, their minds are full of fear against Him, as a God of wrath and one that needs to be feared [nor revered]. When you tell your child that "God is going to throw you in hell fire", and if that child is not taught first of the love of God and His patience, there will never be a lasting trust in the true Father that loved us to the point of sacrificing His son, so that we could come to Him. You have taken the pitch fork from Satan's hands and put in the hands of God. You have reversed the roles of God and Satan. Remember what is written in II Peter 3? II Peter 3:9 "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. It is God's will that all should come to repentance, and come to Him through Jesus Christ. Most of them will not, but all mankind has free will to accept or reject the will of God, and just as there was a delay in Jeremiah's day for the people to turn back to God, there is an appointed time that is made when Satan the Antichrist will set foot on earth to deceive the people of the earth. Most of the people will still reject him. There is a lake of fire that comes at the end of this earth age, following the Millennium age, and the final judgment of God the Father. That lake of fire comes from God, who is the consuming fire, and it comes to consume all evil from the earth, whereby we have a decent place to live for the eternity. However burning children in the flesh never entered God's mind. The lake of fire does not burn flesh, for all flesh will be gone at the sounding of the seventh trumpet, and all souls will exist in the spiritual bodies. It is a thousand years later that the second death comes, the death of the soul. The burning consumption is not in the form as we think of it today. Revelation 20:12 "And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works." This delivering up is following the thousand year teaching and discipline years of the Millennium age, and after the day of final judgment. Revelation 20:13 "And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works." In the Millennium age all souls will be judged by their works, because there is no grace for the Millennium age. Grace is given by faith in Jesus Christ, believing in Christ when we see Him not, and all souls will see Him in that age of teaching. That is why it is by Works. The Elect will have been judged prior, and their judgment is in the form of rewards, and their immortal bodies. Revelation 20:14 "And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death." The first death is the death of your flesh body, "the second death" is the death of your very soul. Satan is death, that is his name, and hell are all of the evil things and souls that refuse to accept Christ as their salvation. Revelation 20:15 "And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire." We enter into the eternity at this moment of destruction. All evil is consumed forever and gone. Only the things and souls of God continue, and even the thought of loved ones that have rejected God will be erased from the memories of your mind. The flesh age is the time that God created to test all souls because of what happened in the first earth age. Each soul is required to live but once in the flesh, and during that time we have the free will to chose between God, and Satan. However because of what some did in the first earth age, they were judged in that age and they are called the Elect. God has never intended to destroy flesh man by fire, especially the innocent. Jeremiah 19:6 "Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that this place shall no more be called Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of slaughter." "Tophet" in the Hebrew language means the "place of burning". "Himmon" means "lamentation". Jeremiah is telling those leaders in Jerusalem that there will not be any burning or lamentation, but a valley of slaughter, of the crowd that follows those false prophets. In our day it is the gathering place of the crowd that will be destroyed at the coming of Jesus Christ. Jeremiah 19:7 "And I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place; and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hands of them that seek their lives: and their carcases will I give to be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth." There is a very important Hebrew word mentioned here in this verse, and that is the word "VOID". It is not the same void, "tohu va bohu" that we read of in Genesis 1:2, but is is from the same prime root as that old bottle that we spoke of earilier. It is # 1238 in the Strong's Hebrew dictionary, "Baqaq, To pour out, or to empty, to spread out, (as an unfruitful vine.) The subject of this chapter is "God is about to pour out the people out of Jerusalem, and the land of Judaea." God is sticking to the subject, just as Jeremiah is about to express that lesson when he dumps that water out of the clay pot, and allow the water to spread in every direction. God is going to empty the vessel. Jeremiah 19:8 "And I will make this city desolate, and an hissing; every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished and hiss because of all the plagues thereof." The city is Jerusalem, and in the future sense, when Jesus was leaving Jerusalem He was asked to look at the wonderful buildings by the disciples. Jesus turned to them and answered; "See ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." [Matthew 24:2] This did not happen in 70 A.D., but it is going to at the return of Christ. That is when the ears are going to tingle of all those that have been deceived. In an Historical sense, the city was torn down, the temple was destroyed and the city leveled when Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian army entered the city about the year 479 B.C. and hauled the inhabitance of the land into captivity and scattered them. Jeremiah 19:9 "And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives, shall straiten them." This came to pass during the great siege of Jerusalem, and in the futurist sense it will come to pass at the seventh trump. At that time we are all changed to the flesh anyway, and at that time that which happens to the flesh body simply won't matter. Jeremiah 19:10 "Then shalt thou break the bottle in the sight of the men that go with thee," God has instructed Jeremiah to take that clay bottle [pot] and hold it over his head and crash it down to the ground as hard as you can. They will see the bottle bust into many pieces as a symbol of what God will do to something that He cleanses. It may sound like God is totally forsaking His people, but we know from prophecy that God was going to scatter His people into many small groups and pour them all over the world. Then in the places that they are in, after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, through reptentance He would draw them back to Him in whatever location they were in. Only through Christ can this bottle be put back together again. Jeremiah 19:11 "And shalt say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter's vessel, that cannot be made whole again: and they shall bury them in Tophet, till there be no place to bury." Remember again, "this city" is the city of Jerusalem. This did come to pass when Jerusalem fell, and it shall come to pass also at the close of this flesh age, upon Christ's return. Many people wonder where the battle "Armageddon" will be, and when it will come to pass. "Megiddo" means "the gathering place of the crowd", and that crowd is made up of God's enemies. Satan wants to be looked at as being the Messiah, or God, and those that believe that Satan [the Antichrist] is God, will gather where he is. Satan will sit in the place where the Scriptures tell us that Jesus Christ will make His throne, and that place is on the side of the north in Jerusalem. Friend that is were the crowd will be hanging out with their leader Satan the Antichrist. It is on Mount Zion, on the temple mountain, in Jerusalem. II Thessalonians 2:4 "Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the Temple of God, shewing himself that he is God." Satan will be given the authority and the ability to do wonders and miracles that will deceive all that do not have the Word of God sealed in their minds. He will play the role of God, and the world will believe and worship Satan as God. They will do that because they have been taught to do so, in their church houses, and they will do it gladly. This is also why a lot of ears of good people will tingle when they see what they have done. The Millennium is not a second chance, for it is the first time many will be taught the first time, and come to know Jesus Christ, and the full love of God. Satan will be gone and in the pit, and all souls will have the full understanding of His Word, as they are taught and disciplined at that time. Jeremiah 19:12 "Thus will I do unto this place, saith the LORD, and to the inhabitants thereof, and even make this city as Tophet:" The city itself will become the place of the burning. The buring will take place in a massive scale in the city of Jerusalem. God is going to cleanse the city of the gathering of the crowds that came to follow Satan, the Antichrist. In Jeremiah's day, Jerusalem was the the place of the center of the false teaching and the crows that came to follow the false instruction and idolatry. It was the place of complete destruction, and the temple, the center of those false teaching God used His servant Nebuchadnezzar to do the job. The city is Jerusalem that all eyes of those that watch for Bible prophecy to take place should be focused on. We see today the leaders of the world, run there with all their peace ideas, but when the temporary peace does come, we will see the Antichrist bringing it to pass. That peace will be short lived to five months, as we read of in the book of Revelation 9:5 "And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man." "They" are Satan who comes with all his fallen angels to earth for the time of the final great deception, as given in Revelation 12:9 "And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him." These four names of Satan describe four of the roles that he played in this earth age. We know that this has not taken place yet, but it is getting close to the time when Satan shall appear, and it shall be prior to the coming of Jesus Christ. Though we don't know the day that this will come to pass, we do know the season, and the parable of the fig tree lets us know that we are well into that season. Jeremiah 19:13 "And the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah, shall be defiled as the place of Tophet, because of all the houses upon whose roofs they have burned incense unto all the host of heaven, and have poured out drink offerings unto other gods." God is telling the royal House of Judah that they will be destroyed. This will come to pass because they have allowed and promoted the burning of incense to the host of heaven, which are Satan's little supernatural angels. Those kings sat by and took part in the worshipping of strange gods, and all forms of idolatry. We look at this as something that is about to happen all over again, when the kings of the earth, and the religious leaders will bring the people under them to Satan the Antichrist and the hosts of heaven that come to earth with him. Are you starting to get the picture that God is revealing to us, that what happen in Jeremiah's day was a type of what shall come to pass very shortly? The people were deceived by the leaders in the temple, and the royal family of the government, to the point of eliminating God and His Word from their lives, and ways, and today we see that there is nothing new under the sun. The lies and deception that will lead most Christians to the Antichrist will come from their church leaders, and the forms set up by the one government. Our God is a jealous God, and when you are pouring out drink offerings unto other gods, you are giving your love to them rather then to the one true God, Our Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ. How do you think that makes God feel when He sees that His children do not like to read His Word, to understand the love and compassion He feels for them? They place their own traditions over the plan and promises that He has set up for them, and allow themselves to be deceived. God is getting disgusted with it, and with them. We have a responsibility to study His Word, and become aware of the times we live in, for God has given us those signs in His Word to keep us from being deceived by Satan and his realm. Jeremiah 19:14 "Then came Jeremiah from Tophet, whither the LORD had sent him to prophesy; and he stood in the court of the LORD's house; and said to all the people," When Jeremiah came to the people, the religious leaders, and the royal house with this message from God he was not received with open arms. Jeremiah was looked at like you would at little squirmy things in your drinking water. Jeremiah was not popular with the people of the world when he came with the message from God. Jeremiah 19:15 "Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring upon this city and upon all her towns all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they have hardened their necks, that they might not hear my words." This message is not just to Jerusalem, but to all the towns that are part of her system. The message of destruction is directed at them because they have hardened their necks, or turned their hearts away from God. They have taken their own traditions and strange religious practices and put them in the place of God's Words and laws. Friend, it is this simple, God has the power to do whatever He please to all peoples, and what He desires from them is only their love and devotion. When God trys to draw the people to Him, they turn their backs to Him, and even set up idols and ways to worship, rather then even recognizing there is a true God. God has told us the details of His entire plan, yet today, just as in Jeremiah's day, the people prefer to believe in fairy-tales of fly away theories. Rather then learning the truth, and trusting in Him for the protection of the end times, they harden their necks to the truth of God's Word. Is it any wonder that God is making this statement that He is going to destroy Jerusalem, the town that yield to it, as well as the religious forms that come from it. Remember the subject of this chapter is an object lesson to warn the people of Jersalem to turn from the idolatry and worshipping of strange gods and practices, and turn to God, or God will destroy them. They continue to listen to close their minds to the warning, so God has Jeremiah to go to the potters house and get a clay pot, and fill it with water. When the leaders of the government and the religious community gather at the potters gate, the lesson takes place. When Jeremiah poured the water out on the ground, it spattered in all directions, and Jeremiah let them know that this is what is going to happen to the people. Then Jeremiah lifted the empty clay pot over his head and thew it hard to the ground before their eyes and it burst into many pieces. Jeremiah let them know that God has said this is what is going to happen to Jerusalem, and the lands and cities that are tied to it. When Jeremiah was finished with the warning, they hated Jeremiah who was the messenger of the Word from God, and they refused to listen or believe any part of it. Why? Because they had their false prophets that told them that it wouldn't happen. Though God did destroy the city of Jerusalem, and sent the people into captivity, He still had His perfect plan of love, and He allow them to be the foundation of what would come in the future. The root of understanding this lesson is in what is outside the potters gate. The blood of Jesus Christ bought that entire field of broken pottery, and through the blood of Christ, all broken lives, or broken bottles can be put back together. When your life falls apart, God does not wish to destroy you, but He wants you to come back to Him and study His Word, and put your life back together. The choice is entirely yours, that is the free will that He placed in every man in the flesh body. You can listen to God, or you can continue right in the same path of distruction.
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