Jeremiah: Encouraging Words For Difficult Times

[KiwiChristian]

Jeremiah: Encouraging Words For Difficult Times

Bible Reading: Jeremiah 23:1-28; 32:16-44.

Memory Verse: ‘I am with thee, saith the LORD, to deliver thee.’ 1:19 ‘ Call unto me and I will..’ (33:3)

Aim: To receive encouragement, wisdom and strength for living from the book of Jeremiah..

Introduction: Jeremiah wrote from 629-588 BC to Judah. He was the son of Hilkiah the priest (1:1). God chose him

before his birth to be a prophet (1:5). He protested God’s call because of his youth (1:6). He prophesied during the reigns of godly king Josiah, Jehoiakim (ungodly, Bible burning), Jehoiachin (90 day reign), Zedekiah (Judah’s last king), Gedaliah (Babylonian appointed governor) and Johanan. He pleaded with Judah to return to God (3:12-15). He was commanded to remain unmarried (16:2). He prophesied the Babylonian captivity would last 70 years (25:11,12; 29:10). He was the weeping prophet (9:1). He was imprisoned, but freed by Nebuchadnezzar (40:1-6). Johanan took him to Egypt 43:1. He rebuked Egypt (46), Philistia (47), Moab (48), Ammon (49), Edom(49), Damascus (49), Elam (49), Babylon.

1. 1:5 God knew us before our birth & ordained us to do a work. ‘Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, I ordained thee a prophet to the nations.’

2. 1:6 God can overcome our fear of speaking for Him by putting His words in our mouth.‘I cannot speak: for I am a child. Say not, I am a child:.. Be not afraid of their faces:…I have put my words in thy mouth.’

3. 1:10 How to restore a country is by uprooting error and by building truth. ‘I have this day set thee over the nations & over the kingdoms, to root out, to pull down, to destroy, to throw down, to build, & to plant’

4. 1:19 God is with us to deliver us from trouble. ‘I am with thee, saith the LORD, to deliver thee.’

5. 2:5 God asks backsliders: What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me ?

6. 3:10 Importance of wholeheartedness. ‘Judah hath not turned unto me with her whole heart, but feignedly, saith the LORD.’ 3:12 ‘I am merciful, saith the LORD, and I will not keep anger for ever.’

7. 3:15 Good pastors are a gift from God. Appreciate and value them. ‘I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding.’

8. 3:17 Jerusalem will be the throne of the LORD and the world capital in the millennium. ‘At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the LORD; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it,’

9. 3:18 Israelites will return from Russia to Israel in the last days. ‘they shall come together out of the land of the north to the land that I have given for an inheritance unto your fathers.’

10. 5:5 Speak with and learn from great men. ‘I will get me unto the great men, and will speak unto them; for they have known the way of the LORD, and the judgment of their God:’

11. 5:25 Sin causes us to lose good things. ‘your sins have withholden good things from you.’ 5:25.

12. 6:16 Value and ask for the old paths and the good way. Peace will result. ‘ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.’

13. 7:18 Serve God as a family. The Catholic ‘Queen of heaven’ is a pagan idea which angers God. ‘The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.’

14. 7:31 Babies go to heaven at death, not to hell. God never thought of sending babies to hell. ‘they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart.’

15. 8:20 Get saved early in life. ‘The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.’

16. 9:23,24 Don’t glory in wisdom, might or riches, but that you understand and know God to be a God of lovingkindness, judgment and righteousness. ‘let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, & righteousness, in the earth’

17. 10:1-4 Learn not the way of the heathen. Christmas trees are of pagan origin. ‘Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.’

18. 10:21 Pastors must seek the LORD or their people will be scattered. ‘the pastors are become brutish, and have not sought the LORD: therefore they shall not prosper, and all their flocks shall be scattered.’

19. 10:23,24 A prayer for guidance and gentle correction. ‘O LORD, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. O LORD, correct me, but with judgment; not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing.’

20. 12:5 If you can’t solve small problems, you won’t solve bigger problems. ‘If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses?’ 1364

21. 12:10 Pastors can buld a church or destroy it by sin, laziness, wrong decisions or not appreciating it. ‘Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness.’

22. 13:23 Some things can’t be fixed. Bad habits are hard to correct. ‘Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.’

23. 15:1 God is persuaded by Godly Christians. Yet even Godly Christians can’t change God’s mind against evil. ‘Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind could not be toward this people:’

24. 15:16 Take God’s word into our innermost being. It will give joy. ‘Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart:’

25. 17:5-11 The cursed man (5), the blessed man (7), the heart (9), riches by dishonesty (11).

26. 18:7-10 God blesses repentant nations (7-8). God withholds good from sinful nations (9-10).

27. 20:9 We are created to give out God’s word. We cannot keep it in. ‘Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay.’

28. 20:13 ‘Sing unto the LORD, praise ye the LORD: for he hath delivered the soul of the poor from the hand of evildoers.’

29. 21:8 Our choice ‘Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I set before you the way of life, and the way of death’

30. 22:1-4 Look for the way to escape trouble. God offered Judah a way to avoid destruction.

31. 22:13 Pay your debts. ‘Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour’s service without wages, and giveth him not for his work;’

32. 22:24,30 Jeconiah’s line to Joseph.(Matthew 1:11). ‘no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah.’ Joseph descended from Jeconiah.

33. 23:1,2 Pastors should visit people or they scatter. ‘Woe be unto the pastors that destroy & scatter…’

34. 23:4 Pastor’s duties: ‘I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them: and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking, saith the LORD.’

35. 23:5,6 Messiah will descend from David. ‘I will raise unto David a righteous Branch,’

36. 23:12 God visits nations & individuals for good or evil. ‘I will bring evil upon them, even the year of their visitation,’

37. 23:16 False prophets speak of their own heart. ‘they speak a vision of their own heart,’ 25,26.

38. 23:23,24 God is close to us yet fills heaven and earth. ‘Am I a God at hand, saith the LORD, and not a God afar off?’ ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the LORD.’ 24.

39. 23:28 ‘he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully.’
23:36 False prophets ‘perverted the words of the living God,’ Examples are NIV, modern versions.

40. 25:9 God uses wicked people to punish wicked people: ‘Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant.’ God punishes wicked oppressors. ‘these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.
And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith the LORD, for their iniquity,’25:11,12,14. ‘After 70 years at Babylon I will visit ‘ 29:10

41. 29:7 ‘seek the peace of the city…. in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.’

42. 29:11-14 ‘I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, not of evil, to give you an expected end. ye shall seek me, & find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.

43. 31:3 Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.

44. 30:7 Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it. 30:20 I will punish all that oppress them.

45. 31:31,33,34 I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel,the house of Judah: Heb 8:8,13;12:24 46. 32:16-19 Prayer: Ah Lord GOD! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power..
32:27 Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me? Omnipotent.

47. 33:3 ‘Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.’

48. 38:17,18 God provides a way of avoiding destruction (17). Verse 18 disproves the book of Mormon. Nobody named Nephi left Jerusalem in 600BC to escape Babylonian destruction as BOM claims. ‘if thou wilt not go forth to the king of Babylon’s princes, then shall this city be given into the hand of the Chaldeans, and they shall burn it with fire, and thou shalt not escape out of their hand.’ Answers p.794.