Jeremiah Chapter 44 "Idolatry, Declaration, and Discussion." This Bible Study is written by Roger
Christopherson, and it's transcription/ location is
provided by http://www.theseason.org As we study these things that are happening to these men and women that have fled to Egypt against the instructions that God gave them through Jeremiah, remember that these things were given to us as an example of what would befall us in these last days of this earth age of the flesh. We are fast approaching the end of this world age, and God is giving us a type, and said to us, it is going to happen exactly like that again. So we can take what is happening in this chapter, as well as the rest of the prophecies of Jeremiah, and apply them to the generation that we live in today. This will allow us understanding of what shall bring about the end of this age. Therefore in this chapter the king of Babylon, which is in the future the king of Babylon of Revelation, being Satan the Antichrist, and just as it happened to Jeremiah, so will it happen to you. Notice what the men and woman decided to do, to worship, and how they looked to our Heavenly Father, so also shall the men and women of our day treat the sacred things and words of our Heavenly Father. Pay attention to who they decided to follow and who they took their direction from. The end result of your actions and words are this; anytime you disobey God when He tells you exactly what is going to happen, it is your own fault, and you will suffer the results. So we see here where Johanan, the one that was the hero from the fall of Jerusalem, has turned out to be nothing but a idol worshipper. Though his deeds and words look and sound good around men, this false hero won't listen to God. He freed the captives from one enemy, Ishmael only to turn them over to another enemy, idolatry in Egypt against God's plan for them. Let's see how God will handle this. Jeremiah 44:1 "The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the Jews which dwell in the land of Egypt, which dwell at Migdol, and at Tahpanhes, and at Noph, and in the country of Pathros, saying," This word from God is directed to all those people from the land of Judah that ran and did not follow God's Word. They are now in the geographic location named here, in Egypt. Jeremiah 44:2 "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; `Ye have seen all the evil that I have brought upon Jerusalem, and upon all the cities of Judah; and, behold, this day they are a desolation, and no man dwelleth therein," God is using His full title here, and it is used only three ties in the entire book of Jeremiah. God is calling attention to these people that when against His Word, and went down into Egypt to flee from the king of Babylon. They did not believe God, when He said for them to stay at Bethlehem and I will protect you. The called Jeremiah a liar when he told them the Words of the Lord, and off they went into Egypt. Not only did they go, but they took Jeremiah, king Zedekiah's daughters, and all those that did not go, were brought down in captivity by Johanan and his rag tag army forces. So God is telling all of these people to look back to what I caused to happen to Jerusalem. Of course He is speaking of all the trouble from the three sieges of Jerusalem, to the burning and dismantling of Jerusalem. It was completely destroyed. The point that God is making to them is that He promised that He would do it, and "I kept My Word." Remember that God had promised this small group of deserters that escaped into Egypt that if they went to Egypt, when also would destroy them in Egypt. Jeremiah 44:3 "Because of their wickedness which they have committed to provoke Me to anger, in that they went to burn incense, and to serve other gods, whom they knew not, neither they, ye, nor your fathers." God is saying, you have Me for your Father, the creator of all things, but that is not good enough for you. You have to make a whore out of yourselves, and go whoring after other religions. You seek other ways to worship. God didn't decide to destroy them, they brought it on themselves. God is asking them, and it is also applied to us today, why do you want to destroy yourselves? I have always kept my word, and now after you refuse to believe Jeremiah, and look what you are getting yourselves into. Jeremiah 44:4 "Howbeit I sent unto you all My servants the prophets, rising early and sending them, saying, `Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate." God is very jealous when He sees His children refusing the protection and love that He has for each of us, and go chasing after abominable things in worship. The earth is the most beautiful of all the other forms of stars and planets that God has created. God made earth for our inhabitation, and man loses sight of the one that created all things, and seeks to chase after man made idols that has no life in them. It is strange how people chose to ignore God, and all the beautiful creation around us, and reject God's perfect plan in favor of their own blind traditions. When you stop and consider the matter, God can bless your life and give you and your family protection, or he can allow curses to come upon you by simply lifting the shield of protection that He has set around you. Are you starting to get the point? Jeremiah 44:5 "But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear to turn from their wickedness, to burn no incense unto other gods." These people didn't listen to God's Word, they didn't care they just set their minds to worshipping other gods. Jeremiah 44:6 "Wherefore My fury and Mine anger was poured forth, and was kindled in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; and they are wasted and desolate, as at this day.' God is reminding these idolatrous people what judgment was done to Judah and Jerusalem for their doing the same thing. Even to this day there would be only a very small remnant that did go back to Jerusalem under Cyrus to rebuild the wall, but they were just a hand full compared to the masses of population that was scattered around the Word. From 70 A.D. to the year, to 1948 Jerusalem had never been the same. To that time the name of Israel and the people calling themselves of Judah simply did not exist, except within the family unit. However according to the plan of God, their coming back into being would establish the generation living in the time of the end. That generation is the generation of the parable of the fig tree. Friend, you are living in fantastic times and it is time to pay attention to the things happening around you, and to what God has to say directly to you. Don't worry about the others, for they are like those that fled into Egypt, they don't care what God had to say, nor do they care for His ways nor His Word. You listen to God through His Word, and allowing the Holy Spirit to give direction through that holy Word. Anoint your mind, whereby you can hear with understanding. Jeremiah 44:7 "Therefore now thus saith the Lord, the God of hosts, the God of Israel; `Wherefore commit ye this great evil against your souls, to cut off from you man and woman, child and suckling, out of Judah, to leave you none to remain;" The sin that these people are committing is not a sin against your flesh, but against you very soul. Why? You are messing around with that portion that gives you eternal life. God is asking them through Jeremiah, Why are you trying to destroy yourself? The majority of the people of the world today are biblically illiterate, and that includes those calling themselves Christians, and Jews. They will listen, but their minds are closed to the understanding of the plan of God. Jeremiah 44:8 "In that ye provoke Me unto wrath with the works of your hands, burning incense unto other gods in the land of Egypt, whither ye be gone to dwell, that ye might cut yourselves off, and that ye might be a curse and a reproach among all the nations of the earth?" God creates the entire world, and man takes out his knife and makes himself a god, and worships the thing. How stupid can you get? That is the same frame of mind that is behind all religious thought, it is man trying to arrange another way to God and the freedom from the guilt for sin that God has placed in all men. When you burn incense to any other god, no matter where you are, you cut yourself off from the only True God. God is asking these people: Why do you want to do this to yourself? God loves His children, all of them, and He doesn't want to see any of them self-destruct, any more that you want your child to be destroyed. Jeremiah 44:9 "Have ye forgotten the wickedness of your fathers, and the wickedness of the kings of Judah, and the wickedness of their wives, and your own wickedness, and the wickedness of your wives, which they have committed in the land of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem." God is asking them, have you forgotten all the wickedness of what was committed even in the streets of Jerusalem? Jeremiah 44:10 "They are not humbled even unto this day, neither have they feared, nor walked in My law, nor in My statutes, that I set before you and before your fathers." God is telling them that they had His advice and instruction from the beginning, through His prophets, and the laws and statutes, and you would not listen. We are special today, because we do have the King James, and the tools that go with it to understand the original meanings of the prophetical writings. Jeremiah 44:11 "Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; `Behold, I will set My face against you for evil, and to cut off all Judah." This is the third time that God used His full title in talking to the people of Judah that are in Egypt. God is saying that because of what you have done, I am going to bring adversity, and take action against you. The action that God took is well recorded in Assyrian history, as well as in the writings of Josephus, "Antiquities of the Jews, Chapter X, v 9, 10" The time of the action was five years after the fall of Jerusalem, and the fleeing to Egypt. Jeremiah 44:12 "And I will take the remnant of Judah, that have set their faces to go into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, and they shall all be consumed, and fall in the land of Egypt; they shall even be consumed by the sword and by the famine: they shall die, from the least even unto the greatest, by the sword and by the famine: and they shall be an execration, and an astonishment, and a curse, and a reproach." Every last person that fled into Egypt of his or her own accord was kill in Egypt, by the sword, or famine or pestilence. Though these were the ones that fled the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem, and would not give themselves as God had commanded, they met their doom in Egypt. God is saying that because of these people, they became an curse upon the entire land of Egypt, and its downfall. This group of people out of Judah were nothing but a bunch of deserters from the beginning, that returned to Jerusalem from other countries after the destruction of Jerusalem. God gave them a second chance if they would stay in Judah, and not leave for Egypt, but they called God and Jeremiah a liar. They killed Gedaliah the governor, whom God had established in power, through Nebuchadnezzar, and they fled to Egypt. Jeremiah 44:13 "for I will punish them that dwell in the land of Egypt, as I have punished Jerusalem, by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence:" Jeremiah 44:14 "So that none of the remnant of Judah, which are gone into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, shall escape or remain, that they should return into the land of Judah, to the which they have a desire to return to dwell there: for none shall return but such as shall escape." Those that "which have a desire", does not include Jeremiah, Baruch, the daughters of Zedekiah, nor the ones that were taken there as captive. This judgment by God is directed only to those that knew and were disobedient of God, or their own free will. God will allow certain of these people to go back. It is absolute though, you will be allowed to go back, or you will die, there is no in-between in this matter. Now apply this thought to today and how man is setting up his systems and declaring them to be God's way. The ones that follow them have no idea in their minds if it is according to God's Word or not, they simply rely on their religious heroes to tell them what to do. Jeremiah 44:15 "Then all the men which knew that their wives had burned incense unto other gods, and all the women that stood by, a great multitude, even all the People that dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered jeremiah, saying," Remember the men took part in the burning of the incense also, and the judgment is on both of them. So this is what those wives and the men that burned the incense said to God and to Jeremiah. Listen to their words carefully. This is the people that God is going to destroy, that is doing the talking. Jeremiah 44:16 "As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken unto thee." They are telling Jeremiah, "We are not going to listen to you Jeremiah". Jeremiah 44:17 "But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil." These people are telling Jeremiah that he can run back to his God, because they are going to continue just as their fathers did in burning their incense to Ishtar, and pouring out their offerings to her. This queen of heaven is Ishtar, the queen that is also known as Easter. They told Jeremiah that they would continue just as their fathers worshipped, for they gave the heathen goddess the credit for the bread they eat and the blessings that they had. Look around you today, do you see the same thing going on today, the celebration to the queen of Easter, the rolling of egg rites that celebrated fertility, and all the other doctrines that go directly against God's Word? Friend, the word Easter is mentioned only one time in the New Testament, and it is found in Acts 12:4, and in the Greek manuscripts, the word for "Easter" is "pascha", which is "Passover". Passover was the time that God said to remember from the time that the death angel passed over homes of the Israelites when they were in captivity in Egypt. They were instructed to slay a pure lamb, and put the blood on the mantel, and eat the flesh to prepare themselves for the departure out of Egypt. This was a type of what Christ would become when His blood was shed on the cross for the sins of many. The event of the celebration was "Passover", and not Easter", yet Christians desire to be just as defiant of God today, as these deserters in Egypt were that faced Jeremiah. They would rather trust in their own traditions, and doctrines to strange gods, then obey the True God of heaven. Jesus Christ blood on the cross is the greatest gift that God ever gave to us, and yet many today still want to pervert it with heathen traditions. They use the heathen symbol of fertility, the egg to represent something that it absolutely is not. They call it "new beginning" today, when it is an abomination to our Heavenly Father, and a sexual orgy rite that is substituted for the holy things that God told us to remember. They do it in ignorance, and they care not what it stands for, because it is what their father's did, and their fathers before them. Are you starting to see how far off the Christian church has gone today. The people of today are no different then these stragglers and deserters that are standing before Jeremiah and God and calling him a liar. Thanks for your warnings Jeremiah, but we will continue just as we are. Then they are so ignorant as to believe that because something religious came from their mouth it has any value at all before the Almighty God. Today the religious leaders will try anything to get the people to come into their doors, and then when they get there they feed these poor sheep fairy tales, and traditions. Jeremiah 44:18 "But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine." These people are telling Jeremiah that when they did stop worshipping Ishtar, the queen of the heavens, thing really went to pot. Just because this is in the bible, you must realize the words are coming from a bunch of heretics. God warned them in Judah what would happen, and when they defied God and the curses came they blamed God for their trouble, not their own defiant ways. Then when the thought they could reverse the promise God made, and it didn't work, they again blamed God. God told them don't leave Bethlehem, and I will protect you there. What did they do, they called God a liar and turned their backs on the warning. The warning was, if you go down there you are going to die. They walk on down there and then have the gull to complain when the curses come. They brought it on themselves. Jeremiah 44:19 "And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings unto her, without our men?" The Hebrew text asks, Did we make the cakes in the shape of Ishtar, and pour our drink offerings to her without our Men? This is the women talking, and the answer is NO, the men sat there and partook right along with them. Jeremiah 44:20 "Then Jeremiah said unto all the People, to the men, and to the women, and to all the People which had given him that answer, saying," This is why you want to watch out for those one verse superstar preachers, they read one verse and you don't know if it is in context, out of context, of the women or the men, or just some nut talking. This is why you must study the scripture chapter by chapter and verse by verse with the subject and the object focused upon. Jeremiah 44:21 "The incense that ye burned in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalme, ye, and your fathers, your kings, and your princes, and the People of the land, did not the Lord remember them, and came it not into Him mind?" Jeremiah is telling them, do you think that God doesn't remember those things that were committed against His holy Word? Of course He does. God knows everything that you have ever done, and He will hold you accountable for them. God has recorded in His books every thing that you do in this life, and you will stand in judgment for each act and word that is not repented of and covered by the precious blood of Christ. Jeremiah 44:22 "So the Lord could no longer bear, because of the evil of your doings, and because of the abominations which ye have committed; therefore is your land a desolation, and an astonishment, and a curse, without an inhabitant, as at this day." When a parent sees his child messing up, it hurts the parent that loves that little one. God is no different , for it also hurts our heavenly Father to see you mess up, and get yourself into a pack of trouble. That is why he gave us His plan to be our guide in living in this flesh age. As you mess up in this life, Satan is standing there before the Father accusing you and twisting the facts to get you in trouble. That is why Satan is called the accuser. Jeremiah is reminding this bunch of fools that this is why Jerusalem is destroyed and your forefathers have been killed or have been hauled away into captivity. God is saying that this happened because I keep my Word, and these people insist on bragging on their stupidity. Jeremiah 44:23 "Because ye have burned incense, and because ye have sinned against the Lord, and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord nor walked in His law, nor in His statutes, nor in His testimonies; therefore this evil is happened unto you, as at this day." God is telling them that the little cakes that they bake to Ishtar, and the incense that they burn, and the drink offerings that they pour are what is going to bring the judgment right down on their head. Friend the judgment is on he who knows to do right, and does it not. The children don't know any better, but their parents do. It is the parents that are bringing them up to continue in the same filth that the parents are in. It is interesting that when Dr. C. D. Ginsburg brought forth the original footnotes to the manuscripts, the Massorah, which we have had the past century. Out of All mankind living on the earth, there was only one man that Dr. Ginsburg trusted with the original manuscripts, to be a proof reader, and scholar, and that was Dr. E. W. Bullinger. Dr Bullinger was the only man that Dr. Ginsburg felt had the integrity to form those manuscripts into the Companion Bible. His wife also helping to proof-read the copy itself. Friend, we have preachers falling all over themselves, but there are very few scholars that are willing to rightly divide the Word of God, and seek out its meanings. Jeremiah 44:24 "Moreover Jeremiah said unto all the People, and to all the women, "Hear the word of the Lord, all Judah that are in the land of Egypt:" Jeremiah 44:25 "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, saying; `Ye and your wives have both spoken with your mouths, and fulfilled with your hand, saying, `We will surely perform our vows that we have vowed, to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her:' ye will surely accomplish, your vows, and surely perform your vows.' " God is telling these people through Jeremiah, that because you have spoken these things with your mouths, and have already preformed these acts of idolatry with your hands, I know you will continue in your vows that you have made here in Egypt. I'm sure this hurt our Lord very much as He looked upon His defiant children. Jeremiah 44:26 "Therefore hear ye the word of the Lord all Judah that dwell in the land of Egypt; Behold, I have sworn by My great name, saith the Lord, that My name shall no more be named in the mouth of any man of Judah in all the land of Egypt, saying, 'The Lord God liveth.' " Because they have made their vows to continue these whoredoms, God is making a judgment upon each of them that are standing there before Jeremiah in Egypt. This is directed to all of these misfits, and the Lord God is saying that you can call out to Me all you want to, and I will not hear you. As far as you are concerned, I don't exist because I will not hear you. You keep right on keeping your vows, and rolling your Easter eggs, and following your little old traditions, but don't you pray to Me, for I will not answer your prayers. God is hurt deeply by these bunch of no-goods, and He cut them off. Jeremiah 44:27 "Behold, I will watch over them for evil, and not for good: and all the men of Judah that are in the land of Egypt shall be consumed by the sword and by the famine, until there be an end of them." God is promising that He is going to bring trouble to your doors, until they bring their end upon themselves. Applying this to our generation, God is making a promise to all those that find pleasure in the Easter eggs, and their fly away theories, and when the false messiah comes, He is going to shut of the understanding to where they won't know the truth from a lie. They will not know the difference between the false messiah, and the True Messiah, and they will run to Satan with open arms. God is calling all these people spiritually dead, and the sword that will consume them is the sword of the Lord, which is the Word that comes from our Lord's mouth. That sword is what we call our Bible. God is saying that He will listen to their prayers, and if He answers at all, it will be with evil. Jeremiah 44:28 "Yet a small number that escape the sword shall return out of the land of Egypt into the land of Judah, and all the remnant of Judah, that are gone into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, shall know whose words shall stand, Mine, or theirs." These are the king's daughters, Jeremiah, Baruch and the other few that went to Egypt only under the captivity of Johanan and his forces. God is saying that in the end, all the people will know that our Lord is God. Anytime you pick up a King James version of God's Word you are reading the reality of this verse coming true, for when all the misfits were killed in Egypt, Jeremiah and those daughters did escape, and one of those daughter's offspring was on the throne of England and made the decree that the Bible would be published and placed in the hands of all the people in the empire. That king was King James I of England, and the version is what we call the King James version. Because God kept His Word to the remnant here in Egypt, these daughters lived and had sons to many generations, even to our day, and the queen today is Queen Elizabeth II. Which word do you chose, God's Word, or that of some tradition? Jeremiah 44:29 "And this shall be a sign unto you, saith the Lord, that I will punish you in this place, that ye may know that My words shall surely stand against you for evil:' " God is making a promise to not only them in Egypt, but also those to our generation, that if you place yourself under the vows of some heathen religious form, or practice, He is going to stand against you. If you bring heathen practices in My house of Worship, God is going to see to it that you are cursed. Jeremiah 44:30 "Thus saith the Lord; `Behold, I will give Pharaoh-hophra king of Egypt into the hand of his enemies, and into the hand of them that seek his life; as I gave Zedekiah king of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, his enemy, and that sought his life.' " God did exactly as Jeremiah said it would happen, from the promises of God. God delivered every last person that revolted against Nebuchadnezzar, including the Egyptian king "Hophra", and they were killed. The only ones to survive were the ones that submitted themselves at Nebuchadnezzar's coming, just as God instructed them to. This is also why there is no Egyptian record of this event, and to find record of it we must go to Assyria that lived through this time, and was not destroyed. Remember back in Jeremiah 43:9, when God told Jeremiah to take that brick from the street, and place that letter under the brick. That is the location that Nebuchadnezzar placed his Babylonian headquarters. To this day, the best manuscripts in the entire world of the Word of God are held in protection in the British museum. These are the ones from the Massorah that had that fence of protection around them. There are others scattered around, but it is not an accident that God's Holy Word is where it is. How are you doing in your life, friend? Is God placing blessings before your path, or is it trouble around every turn. God gave us this Bible to instruct us how we can be assured of having our prayers answered, it is done by knowing how to please our Heavenly Father. When everything is said and done in this earth age, our Heavenly Father's Word will be proven true in all matters. ---------------
Home .~ Plough .~ Seeds .~ Vine .~ Potter .~ Seasons .~ Sonshine .~ Rain .~ Field |