PERSONAL STUDY AND TEACHING IN JEREMIAH – PART 19 – JUDAH IS HEADING FOR BIG TROUBLE - AND LYING PROPHETS
PART 19 - Jeremiah 5:10-27
CHAPTER 5
[A]. THE VINEYARD STRIPPED OF ITS TREACHEROUS BRANCHES
{{Jeremiah 5:10 “Go up through her vine rows and destroy, but do not execute a complete destruction. STRIP AWAY HER BRANCHES, for they are not the LORD’S, Jeremiah 5:11 for the house of Israel and the house of Judah have dealt very treacherously with Me,” declares the LORD. Jeremiah 5:12 They have lied about the LORD and said, “Not He. Misfortune will not come on us, and we will not see sword or famine.” Jeremiah 5:13 THE PROPHETS ARE AS WIND, and the word is not in them. Thus it will be done to them.”}}
There is a marked difference in translation of verse 10 in the KJV and the modern translations, with the NASB and the NIV and the ESV very much agreeing on what is above. The KJV speaks of going up against walls and taking away battlements, and older commentators make a case for the campaign against the walls of Jerusalem and taking the city.
Apparently the smallest difference in Hebrew with points, etc (I don’t know Hebrew) can make that difference, so let us look at the verse as it most likely is. The Lord speaks, and the order is to reality, that is, how it must happen and what is to happen. The command is not to Jeremiah for he can not do that, and it is not to the nation for they were utterly corrupt, so that leaves the agency of Babylon to usher in this reality. It is the invading army that will execute what the Lord commands in verse 10.
The prophets often used agricultural examples and illustrations in their messages, for an agrarian people would understand this. The Lord Jesus also used examples from the lives of the people as examples. Israel is the vineyard of the Lord as Isaiah set out in a parable, and so this action in the vineyard is the action that will happen in Judah (it already had in Israel/Samaria). In Isaiah's example in chapter 6 of his Prophecy it is the vineyard Owner in focus. That is the LORD who set the vineyard up beautifully, and tried everything to get the vines to produce excellent grapes but they produced only mutant, corrupt grapes. In the end the vineyard would be uprooted and destroyed. The vineyard is Israel and both Isaiah and Jeremiah preached to a stubborn and unrepentant nation that ignored several centuries of warning until such time God said, “Enough!” and the vineyard was uprooted and burnt. (Yes, but not the entire nation, for destruction would not be complete. A remnant would always be left.)
The command was to go through row after row in the vineyard and destroy the vines. The branches would be cut off, or torn off, leaving just the stocks in the ground. The word for branches can also be tendrils, those young shoots, but as healthy as they may look, they are foreign ones because God says they don’t belong to the Lord. What God will do is remove all the unholy, mutant, godless and idolatrous growth in Judah, stripping it all away just to leave the stock in the ground, the holy stock going back as far as Abraham. The land will have its cleansing.
Commentator Matthew Henry said, [[“Judah's degenerate members are to be removed, but the vine-stock, i.e., the behooving kernel of the nation, is to be left. It is the key-note of the "remnant" which Jeremiah again strikes.”]] The prophet Amos speaks of a remnant in these verses – {{Amos 3:11-12 Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD, “An enemy, even one surrounding the land, will pull down your strength from you and your citadels will be looted.” Thus says the LORD, “Just as the shepherd snatches a couple of legs or a piece of an ear from the lion’s mouth, so will the sons of Israel dwelling in Samaria be snatched away - with the corner of a bed and the cover of a couch.}} The picture is of a marauding lion that seizes on a sheep and would devour it completely except the shepherd is able to pull a couple of legs out of the lion’s mouth, or a piece of an ear. So it will be that when the lion of Babylon comes against Judah, a remnant will be spared and even some of them like Daniel will be led through the Ishtar Gate of Babylon with its famed lions adorning the Gate.
God always works through remnants because only a remnant of people in all ages since Adam will believe. The scriptures are full of that principle. It was so obvious that the Lord also spoke of it here – {{Matthew 7:13-14 “Enter by the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction and many are those who enter by it, for the gate is small and THE WAY IS NARROW THAT LEADS TO LIFE AND FEW ARE THOSE WHO FIND IT.”}}
What is a Christian nation? Is it one where some people belong to the Lord, or many people, or most people, or all the people? No one qualifies in the last category and only a tiny few relate to the “many” or “most”. The notable examples I personally know of are Samoa, Tonga, American Samoa (Pango Pango), three Polynesian Island nations in the South Pacific. I might also include the Faroe Islands in that, located off the coast of Scotland. The national motto in American Samoa is, “In Samoa, God is first.” When first visiting there I remember seeing those quaint coloured, opened island buses, and I watched one slowly come towards me and right across the front at the top was written, “God is good,” and then when the bus passed, on the back of the bus was written, “All the time.” May the Lord bless those island nations in a world that has gone WOKE and in rapid departure from the truth in utter ungodliness. Sadly, false cults are ravishing these Pacific Islands.
In the next three verses, 11-13, God adds the charges again to Judah. He called them traitors, for traitors act treacherously and the nation was very treacherous in casting Jehovah aside and turning to all the false gods of the nations. They betrayed the One who delivered them over and over again, turning aside to sate their sinful desires and debauchery. They claimed Jehovah was not God and their gods were the true ones.
This is lying as Jeremiah writes and they were so deluded by Satan that they believed the lie. They cast God aside as not the One who counts. They believed the lying prophets who constantly said that no misfortune would come on the nation. They also dismissed Jeremiah as not representing God. They rested back in false hope that they would not see famine or that an army was coming to invade.
We wonder how men can be so blind that they can not see the truth, but the god of this world has blinded the eyes of those who do not believe. God allowed that blindness to come upon them because that is how they wanted it to be. Jeremiah then pertinently states the true situation, that is, the false prophets are liars, and as such, they are as light as the wind. They have no substance and waft in and out spreading their false message even as the wind moves around. God’s word is certainly not in them. False prophets, false teachers, empty vessels were the order of the day. This section concluded with Jeremiah saying that the things they denied would be done to them. They would see famine and hardship and the invasion of a foreign army with its swords that will strike to the heart of these false prophets.
A PERVERTED WORLD
Our current world is in a very serious situation, especially the western democracies for they are tottering and some could very soon fall. The rate of increase with which wicked men and women and evil are overtaking society, is alarming. The United States is in a very precarious position because the fabric of Government is failing and the judiciary is in collapse. Godly men and women see this but so many don't and are willingly rushing to disaster in the acceptance of evil policies and corruption.
At times it is frustrating and upsetting to live in topsy-turvy times as we have today, when lying, demonic people replace God’s standard with the opposite. God has said a man and a woman join together in marriage. The world’s false prophets oppose that and say two men or two women constitute a marriage. God said that a man and a woman in union will multiply and have children but the world’s false prophets say, that is not correct. Homosexual and lesbian couples can adopt children. God says that adultery and fornication are wrong but the world’s false prophets carry out sex education in schools telling the kids it is good to experiment and have sex; just use a condom when you do.
God says it is wrong to bear false witness but the world’s false prophets say it is fine for politicians to bend the rules, and in Queensland (at the time, the Premier, Beattie) said it was acceptable to lie in parliament. In the Law, and even earlier, to Noah, God gave rules and guidelines for murder and manslaughter, but the world’s false prophets have enshrined it in the court system that one won’t suffer full penalty if the act was carried out under the influence of drugs or alcohol. God said that crimes must have a penalty, and He made them commensurate with the crime. The world’s false prophets say that is not a principle to work to, and men can be cruelly persecuted just through an accusation from a child like “I was touched,” even though this alleged event happens in a crowd, while a frail 82 year old woman can be bashed in my city by a criminal Aboriginal youth, with her face wrecked and jaw broken, but the legal system lets the Aborigine go free simply on probation.
CITE THE CASE OF THE AXE BANDID AND THE VICTIM POSSIBLY BEING SUED
The wisdom of the world is foolishness with God, and God’s wisdom has been trashed by the world. Christians understandably are insulted and frustrated by current standards, but God is an unchangeable God, and one day His justice shall prevail at the great white throne when the books are opened and the dead are judged by the things written there. {{Acts 17:30-31 “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which HE WILL JUDGE THE WORLD IN RIGHTEOUSNESS through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”}}
[B]. A FOREIGN NATION WILL DISMANTLE THE WHOLE OF JUDAH
{{Jeremiah 5:14 Therefore, thus says the LORD, the God of hosts, “because you have spoken this word, behold, I am making MY WORDS FIRE IN YOUR MOUTH and this people wood, and it will consume them. Jeremiah 5:15 Behold, I AM BRINGING A NATION AGAINST YOU FROM AFAR, O house of Israel,” declares the LORD. “It is an enduring nation. It is an ancient nation, a nation whose language you do not know, nor can you understand what they say. Jeremiah 5:16 Their quiver is like an open grave. All of them are mighty men, Jeremiah 5:17 and they will devour your harvest and your food. They will devour your sons and your daughters. They will devour your flocks and your herds. They will devour your vines and your fig trees. With the sword they will demolish your fortified cities in which you trust.}}
The prophet paints a very dramatic picture here about the severe threat to Judah but we know it was ignored. A skilled craftsman can fashion a beautiful work of art from the repeated blows of a hammer on soft gold or copper. Consider the marvellous appearance the Mercy Seat and Cherubim must have presented in the Tabernacle through the skill of Bezalel and Oholiab. However that same hammer can pound away at a hunk of hardened steel all day and there will be no difference, for the craftsman can not produce the excellence in his mind in an unresponsive piece of material. The difference in the two examples is that one metal was malleable and the other, not, and one metal yielded to the hammer’s intention, but the other metal did not.
VERSE 14. God’s word is a hammer as Jeremiah says – {{Jeremiah 23:29 “Is not My word like fire?” declares the LORD, “and like a hammer which shatters a rock?”}} It can break the rock in pieces, but the heart of Judah was harder than rock and not even the hammer of God was effective because the nation as a whole, set its heart to be unmalleable and it would not yield to her God. The other thing this verse says is that God’s word is like fire, and that is exactly what God is telling Jeremiah in 5 v 14. The prophet was entrusted with a task, and it was required of him to be faithful to that task, not to convert the nation. We have the same calling. We are to be faithful in all our ministry and God will honour the task. We can convert no one; it is a work of the Holy Spirit. Jeremiah could convert no one. He had to be faithful in his preaching and ministry, and he was, and God then told him that His words would be a fire in his mouth but it would consume the nation, for it was wood. Being wood, it will be burnt up, but had it been gold, then the fire would have refined it, and made it beautiful. Judah chose to be wood and it suffered the outcome.
Jeremiah spoke God’s word and it is that word that will determine the result. When the word of God is rejected, it is that word which will burn judgment to the people. En large the world has despised the word of God, the bible, and Christians as well, but it is that very word that will pierce men through in the Tribulation just around the corner, and later at the great white throne.
VERSE 15. It is revealed to the prophet, and then the prophet to the people, that a northern nation was coming, but coming because God was bringing them. We have seen already that the people rejected Jeremiah’s message because they believed the false prophets, not God. The nation that was coming was Babylon, unnamed in this verse, but God says of them they have endured and are ancient.
Yes, they are ancient for they were old Babel where they tried to conquer God by building a ziggurat to heaven in the time of Nimrod, but God was displeased and judged their one language so it became many. They speak a language not understandable. Jeremiah says they will speak an unknown language to the people. Isaiah says something similar – {{Isaiah 33:19 “A people of unintelligible speech which no one comprehends, of a stammering tongue which no one understands.”}}. Babel means confusion, and when Judah is invaded confusion will break out everywhere. Confusion prevailed before the invasion because of the false prophets.
VERSE 16. touches on their warfare. The quiver being an open grave means they will kill many, just like a large pit is made for mass graves. The army can not be stopped. The description is “mighty men” and quivers are full of arrows that will kill so many. This is one thing God had against the nation He sent against Judah. Babylon was to punish Judah but it was cruel and merciless, and in turn, God severely punished them through the Medes for their behaviour. Today, the nations of the world will not escape either the coming wrath.
VERSE 17. In verse 17, there are 5 aspects of Judean life that will suffer through invasion. Harvest and food will be eaten and destroyed by the enemy; sons and daughters will be killed or taken captive; flocks and herds taken and killed or eaten; vines and fig trees destroyed (maybe in the wider sense, all fruit trees and food crops); and lastly, no fortified city will be able to withstand the invasion. They will be overrun. The whole infrastructure of life is demolished. It is utter ruin. All is shattered and will be gone.
