Ezekiel (Program #2) – Introduction (2)

Ezekiel is a book of visions. The prophet Ezekiel was a young man, just 30 years old and having just concluded his apprenticeship to the priest when he received these visions. We also need a vision from God concerning His divine plan and His eternal purpose. And like Ezekiel, it’s critical to pay attention to three things if we are to receive such a vision. First, is the place that we are in. Second, the kind of person that we are. And third, the conditions necessary to receive these visions.

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Lamentations (Program #3) – The Third Lamentations (2)

The prophet Jeremiah in the Old Testament had much to be sorrowful for.  For all around him is God’s judgment.  This judgment fell upon God’s people Israel because of their degradation and their unfaithfulness.  It also fell upon the nations that surrounded Israel for opposing God’s people and His purpose.  And finally God’s judgment fell upon the prophet himself, not so much for his own failures and sins but rather because the prophet Jeremiah properly identified with his people Israel and thereby shared in their judgment.  It was these sufferings that brought him to pour out his heart and soul to Jehovah in the short book called Lamentations.  But in so doing, we see some wonderful passages that can be immense help to those of us in the New Testament economy.  For Jeremiah learned to practice three marvelous things that sustain him and likewise can sustain us.  We will look at these three in today’s program.

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Lamentations (Program #2) – The Third Lamentations

The book of Lamentations was written by the prophet Jeremiah after he had witnessed the devastation that had befallen on the nation and people of Israel.  Altogether he includes five lamentations in this short book.   The third of which is perhaps the most important for us, God’s New Testament people because this lamentation is one of the prophets being identified with the rebellious people of God, the apostate nation of Israel.  Even though Jeremiah himself had remained utterly faithful to the Lord.  Yet because he still was an Israelite, God was demonstrating to him that every true prophet must identify with God’s people even in their chastisement and suffering.  But another striking element of this lamentation bears a uniquely New Testament quality and even hints of God’s desire to restore His chosen people, even to impart Himself to the deepest part of their being.

With that in view, now listen closely to Jeremiah’s own words in this third lamentation. “It is Jehovah’s loving-kindness that we are not consumed, For His compassions do not fail;They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. Jehovah is my portion, says my soul; Therefore I hope in Him. Jehovah is good to those who wait on Him, To the soul that seeks Him.“

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Lamentations (Program #1) – Introduction

No two books of the Bible are probably more linked than the Old Testament books of Jeremiah and Lamentations.  Jeremiah, a book of God’s judgment and punishment upon His rebellious people Israel is followed by the prophet Jeremiah’s lamentations over the sufferings of Israel.  Listen to his word in the first of these lamentations, chapter 1:1-2 “How the city sits alone That was full of people! She who was once great among the nations Has become like a widow; She who was a princess among the provinces Has become tributary.  Bitterly she weeps in the night, And her tears are on her cheeks. There is no one to comfort her Among all her lovers; All her friends have dealt treacherously with her; They have become her enemies.”  This was Jeremiah’s speaking of the utter destruction and devastation that had been visited upon the city by the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar.  And the suffering of Jeremiah reflects that of all of God’s people, especially no doubt the few righteous among them.

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Jeremiah (Program #22) – The Spiritual Sequence in the Bible and in Jeremiah

The Bible presents God’s work and God’s plan in a marvelous sequence.  If we see the spiritual significance, we can see that right after creating man, God presents Himself to man as man’s source, only to be rejected by the very man that He had created.  But what seems to be the end of God’s plan is really just the beginning.  As God deals with the sins that besets mankind by coming Himself to be man’s righteousness and his life and ultimately to gain man fully for Himself as His enlargement and expression.  This is the sequence of the whole Bible.  And that sequence is closely parallel by the account of the prophet Jeremiah.  The sequence of the divine revelation in the Bible and the same sequences as found in Jeremiah is our topic on today’s life study.

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Jeremiah (Program #20) – Jehovah’s Promise concerning the Restoration of Israel

The history revealed in the Bible is a history of the covenants that God made with man.  In reality, only two of these covenants have great significance.  The first of which from Exodus 25 was the covenant of law that God made through Moses when He gave Israel the ten commandments.  The second covenant called the new covenant was also the last covenant.  And though it was not enacted until the Lord Jesus sacrificed Himself on the cross for our redemption.  It was clearly foretold by the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah chapter 31, listen to the word of this marvelous new covenant as spoken by the Old Testament prophet.

“Indeed, days are coming, declares Jehovah, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by their hand to bring them out from the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was their Husband, declares Jehovah. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares Jehovah: I will put My law within them and write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be My people. And they will no longer teach, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, Know Jehovah; for all of them will know Me, from the little one among them even to the great one among them, declares Jehovah, for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.“

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Jeremiah (Program #14) – Jehovah’s further Commission to Jeremiah (1)

The prophet Jeremiah was one with the Lord in many regards. So much so that during the troubling and tumultuous time in which Jeremiah lived, God used him as His own mouth. Bringing Jehovah’s direct speaking to the apostate and rebellious people of Israel. Yet despite being the Lord’s called and anointed prophet, Jeremiah also suffered greatly, sharing in Israel’s judgment. It’s understandable then at times he was given to complaining and bitterness. Yet the Lord was continually with him, comforting him and encouraging him not to speak “worthless things” as the people did. But to speak words that matched the preciousness of Jehovah and all that He had revealed to Jeremiah.

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Jeremiah (Program #11) – A Word concerning Israel’s History

On Mount Sinai, Israel was in the dawning of a divine revelation. God had revealed the law to them as a portrait, a picture of Himself. And opened His heart’s desire to them that He would be everything to them, even a Husband that they would be a people to Him and eventually become even His duplication. But the history of Israel reveals how quickly they have departed from this revelation and this sunrise soon became a sunset, leaving Israel in darkness and under the chastising hand of Jehovah. This was the situation when God had to call a young boy to be a prophet for Him. Jeremiah was raised up by the Lord because Jehovah found no one among His kings, princes or even His priests that would be faithful to Him and speak His word to the people. To see Israel in the sunset of the divine revelation becomes a sober warning to us today – never to forsake Him, the fountain of living waters.

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Jeremiah (Program #10) – A Word concerning Israel’s History

Many people think the book of Jeremiah is not easy to read nor to understand. Well, it maybe hard to ready because it seems to be full of the failures and degradation of God’s people, Israel. Yet despite page after page of such failures, there are wonderful crystals of God’s economy and of the new covenant and of Christ Himself. It’s hard to understand because much of it is based on the history of God’s people and what has led up to the time when God called a young man, even still in his mother’s womb to be a prophet for Him and speak on His behalf to the rebellious and unfaithful people of Israel. This was the prophet Jeremiah.

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Jeremiah (Program #9) – Israel’s Sin against Jehovah, Jehovah’s Punishment upon Israel (2)

During one of the dark hours in Israel’s history, Jehovah poured His heart out to Jeremiah, the prophet that He raised up to speak to Israel on His behalf. Listen to his word and see if you can sense in His speaking the anguish of a distraught husband over the unfaithfulness of a wife to whom He had been faithful to the uttermost. Jeremiah 3:6-9 “Then Jehovah said to me in the days of Josiah the king, Have you seen what Israel the apostate has done? She went up on every high mountain and under every flourishing tree and committed fornication there. And I said, After she has done all these things, she will return to Me; but she did not return…And I saw that because of all the adultery that Israel the apostate committed I divorced her and gave her a certificate of divorce, And because she treated her fornication lightly, she polluted the land and committed adultery with stones and trees.”

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