Immerse: Prophets - Flipbook - Page 266
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IMMERSE
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PROPHETS
25:8-14; 26:1-9
by worshiping idols you made with your own hands, bringing on your
selves all the disasters you now suffer. And now the Lord of Heaven’s
Armies says: Because you have not listened to me, I will gather together
all the armies of the north under King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, whom
I have appointed as my deputy. I will bring them all against this land and
its people and against the surrounding nations. I will completely destroy
you and make you an object of horror and contempt and a ruin forever. I
will take away your happy singing and laughter. The joyful voices of bride
grooms and brides will no longer be heard. Your millstones will fall silent,
and the lights in your homes will go out. This entire land will become a
desolate wasteland. Israel and her neighboring lands will serve the king of
Babylon for seventy years.
“Then, after the seventy years of captivity are over, I will punish the king
of Babylon and his people for their sins,” says the Lord. “I will make the
country of the Babylonians a wasteland forever. I will bring upon them all
the terrors I have promised in this book—all the penalties announced by
Jeremiah against the nations. Many nations and great kings will enslave
the Babylonians, just as they enslaved my people. I will punish them in
proportion to the suffering they cause my people.”
This message came to Jeremiah from the Lord early in the reign of Jehoia
kim son of Josiah, king of Judah. “This is what the Lord says: Stand in the
courtyard in front of the Temple of the Lord, and make an announcement
to the people who have come there to worship from all over Judah. Give
them my entire message; include every word. Perhaps they will listen and
turn from their evil ways. Then I will change my mind about the disaster I
am ready to pour out on them because of their sins.
“Say to them, ‘This is what the Lord says: If you will not listen to me
and obey my word I have given you, and if you will not listen to my ser
vants, the prophets—for I sent them again and again to warn you, but you
would not listen to them—then I will destroy this Temple as I destroyed
Shiloh, the place where the Tabernacle was located. And I will make Jeru
salem an object of cursing in every nation on earth.’”
The priests, the prophets, and all the people listened to Jeremiah as he
spoke in front of the Lord’s Temple. But when Jeremiah had finished his
message, saying everything the Lord had told him to say, the priests and
prophets and all the people at the Temple mobbed him. “Kill him!” they
shouted. “What right do you have to prophesy in the Lord’s name that
this Temple will be destroyed like Shiloh? What do you mean, saying that
