Jeremiah 23 & 24

Chapter 23

Verses 5-6: The days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will raise up to David a righteous branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is right in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The LORD of Righteousness.

• Isaiah 4:2--In that day the Branch of the LORD will be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory of the survivors in Israel.
• Isaiah 9:7--Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this.
• Isaiah 11:1--A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
• Matthew 1:21-23--She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the LORD had said through the prophet: "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"--which means "God with us."
• Romans 3: 21-22--But now a righteousness from God, apart from the law, has been made known, to which the law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference..."

Verses 16-18: This is what the LORD Almighty says: "Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD. They keep saying to those who despise me, 'The LORD says: You will have peace.' And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts they say, 'No harm will come to you.' But which of them has stood in the council of the LORD to see or to hear his word? Who has listened and heard his word?

• I believe we see a lot of this today. Religious "leaders" who don't want to offend anyone do not report fully the life the God would have His followers lead.
• "Visions from their own minds" give me the impression that these "leaders" twist the Word to fit their own pre-conceived notions. I believe this happens a lot, and not just in malicious ways but in totally innocent ways. Clearly, however, it is not appropriate to add or subtract material details from Scripture.
• "And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts..." is quite an appropriate fragment. In an age of following your heart, this snippet says a lot about the hear which the world would have us believe is worthy to be followed. The heart is stubborn, at least mine is, and it's easy for me to "follow it" while thinking I'm following God. The heart has a way of convincing us that we are following God when all we're really doing is pleasing ourselves.
• There's a lot here in these verses, and I've not even begun to scratch the surface of what these passages have to say about "lying prophets".

Verses 26-32:

This passage is more of the LORD's disgust with "lying prophets." These prophets say things that are "the delusions of" the prophets' own minds. But it's even more sinister than that. God knows that these delusions have a foundation in the lying prophets' desire to cause their parishoners to notice the prophets rather than God. They are power-hungry. A big problem is these prophets give God credit for their own delusional words which masks the fact that they are truly speaking on their own and for their own gain.

Verses 35-36--This is what each of you keeps on saying to his friend or relative: 'What is the LORD's answer?' or 'What has the LORD spoken?' But you must not mention 'the oracle of the LORD' again, because every man's own word becomes his oracle and so you distort the words of the living God, the LORD Almighty, our God.

• Again, we see God calling it like it is, showing us how easy it is to distort God's word. In fact, it's so easy that everyone does it.
• This really give pause to me as to how I present God's word to others, and this is a main reason why we should accompany our scritpture reading & teaching with prayer for wisdom & discernment.

Chapter 24:

This chapter deals with God using two baskets of figs to illustrate how He will deal with the people. One basket is full of good figs suitable for eating, the other basket is full of figs that aren't good enough to be eaten. God says he regards as good the exiles from Judah whom He relocated to Babylon. He makes the promis that He will return them to their land and "give them a heart to know me, that I am the LORD."

The poor figs God equates with Zedekiah, King of Judah, his officials, and those survivors scattered about. The promise God makes to these people is not a pleasant one. It's one that will keep them dishoveled for a long time, and one in wich famine, oppression, and war will follow as well.