Jeremiah [Part 3] - Harsh Words & Restoration

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom. We have arrived at chapter 16 of Jeremiah. I actually hate to teach chapter 16 of Jeremiah. It's a hard one; it's a really hard chapter, and I've never heard a sermon. I've been a believer since the age of 16, and I'm 77 years old right now. I've been in church every week, at least one time, all my life as a believer since the age of 16, since 1962. I’ve heard thousands of pastors and thousands of teachings and sermons, literally all over the world, in more than 50 countries that I've preached. I never heard anybody preach the first part of chapter 16 of Jeremiah.

Why? It's a very harsh, very difficult, very unsavory chapter to teach. I'm going to start this chapter reading from the New King James Version:

Harsh, difficult chapter, talking about the citizens of Jerusalem. My town, my kind of town. I was raised here from the age of one in this city, in Jerusalem, and to read Jeremiah, one of my favorite prophets, saying these harsh things about Jerusalem is difficult—rightly difficult. When I came, growing up in this town, there was a small town, not a big city of over a million people. There was about a hundred and eighty thousand people living in Jerusalem in the early 1950s. A lot of people knew a lot of people. I knew all the people in my neighborhood, all the neighbors, all the children. We went to the same school, to the same kindergarten. The city was not tightly populated. Between each house, there was 50–60 meters distance from the next house.

And these words that came to Jeremiah, he didn't invite them; he didn't want them; he didn't express happiness for receiving it. They came to him; they were imposed upon him by God, talking about: you shouldn't have children; you shouldn't get married; you shouldn't have sons and daughters, because the sons and the daughters who will be born in your time in Jerusalem will see a great tragedy, a great calamity. And this is the God that the Psalm says: God is love. Dear brothers and sisters, God is love. But everything that is written here that is going to happen in the days of Jeremiah was already promised to Moses in the last chapters of Leviticus that say, "If you go against me, if you harden your heart against me, this is what's going to happen to you."

And now God says to Jeremiah, "It's going to happen. Don't have children." You know, the New Testament, Paul says the same thing: "It's better not to have children now." The Talmud says the same thing, and I'll give you the reference: Baba Batra page 60 side b. Rabbi Ishmael says, "It's better not to have children in these times, they are times of calamity." The fall of Jerusalem. God promised that this is going to happen if we are unfaithful to Him. Jeremiah lived in, the middle of the 750 BC, and it was a time of calamity. The enemy was knocking at the door. And the description that I read is very harsh.

And people that believe in the kind of Santa Claus God that He gives gifts and He blesses and He's happy all the time get surprised, get disappointed when they read this kind of text in the Bible. But the God of Israel is the God of love, and sometimes, you know, after warnings and warnings and warnings that God gave my people, the people of Israel, in the end, He had to keep His promises. He had to show who is the boss. He has to demonstrate that He is the God that created the heavens and the Earth, and He's the God who chose Abraham and his seed, and Jacob and his seed, and Isaac and his seed, the line of Abraham, to become a blessing for the world.

And if we're not a blessing, we were not fulfilling the very purpose for our election. Then God, in the end, has to take measures—harsh measures—just like He did in the 20th century, with about a quarter to a third of the Jewish population of the world dying in Nazi concentration camps, in gas chambers, in cruel ways of execution. Yes, God is our Father, and sometimes fathers have to discipline their children. And it's always painful; it's always painful. But in this chapter 16, there is also, toward the end of the chapter, a bright side. Let me continue reading so that we see the progression of the text. I read till verse 9. I'm going to go back to verse 9:

Now this text in the future of Jeremiah's text is reversed. Singing, all the Israelis singing our congregations, sometimes singing, they will be heard in the streets of Jerusalem: the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride and the voice of children playing in the streets of Jerusalem, in the hills of Jerusalem and Judea and the streets of Jerusalem, wow, this is a harsh prophecy. But it has the reverse of it that God promises Israel in the restoration of Israel, and we're living in those days now.

The Lord pronounces disaster in verse 10. Why? Because of our iniquity. And the elders of the people of Jerusalem, the Israelites, ask, “What kind of iniquity? What kind of iniquity have you done?” They’re not aware; they’re not aware. The leadership is not aware of what they do wrong. They’re not aware that they became very religious, but they forsook God. You can be very religious and not know that God exists, not realize that God is in control. You can be very religious, go to synagogue, and pray and worship and do everything and be without a relationship with the Almighty Creator of the heavens and the Earth. The prophet accuses the Israelites of his days: "You think your forefathers were bad? You have done worse than your forefathers" (verse 12).

They went to exile, 70 years, to Babylonian exile, as God promised. But in verse 14, we see a switch. That harsh situation, very harsh, where the bodies of the dead will not be buried but the birds of the air and the animals of the field will devour them, eat them—that situation is not going to last forever.

Yes, the first part of the chapter is very harsh. God is not pleased with us, and He punishes us. Verse 14, there is a switch. God says, “Yes, they did bad; they got punished.” But there will be a change in my relationship with my people. There will be a change in which God swears in verse 15 of Jeremiah 16: “But the Lord lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north,” not from Egypt, from the south, but from the land of the north. What’s north of us? It’s Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Russia. I remember in the 1970s writing postcards and getting churches to write postcards to the Russian Embassy: “Let my people go.”

Huge campaigns asking the Russians to release the Jewish people from their captivities in Russia, in Siberia, in all the stands around Russia, where the Jewish people were oppressed. They were not allowed to learn Hebrew. They were prisoners of Zion, they were called; they were in Russian prisons. And then, after God promises this, that He will return those that are in exile, the children of Israel that are in exile, back to the land that He gave our forefathers, continuing in verse 16, He says:

'I know who they are,' God says. 'I know their sin, I know their iniquity, and...

From this text, the prophet goes into a song, into poetry:

With capital letters, 'my name is Jehovah'. In other words, their punishment, because of our sin. Then there is a reversal in God's mind when He realizes that He punished us enough, and He will restore us and bring us from all over, and also from the land of the north. Yes, sir, God will restore us; He is restoring us. I am a product of Jews from Bulgaria who immigrated in 1947 back to this land. They knew nothing about Hebrew; they knew nothing about the land. But they knew we are Jews, and that's where we belong. They packed up three backpacks and brought me, my sister, my mother, and my father. Later on, my grandmother and my uncles and aunts came. They left houses; they left good jobs; they left friends; they left relatives in Bulgaria. And they immigrated to Israel with nothing.

And the prophet now brings this very important point. They will understand that idols are nothing, that idols are not alive, that they're a figment of their own imagination, that they do no good because they're dumb and deaf, and they have legs, but they cannot walk, and they have hands, but they cannot work. Verse 20:

Just to ask the question is to answer it. That’s what the words of the commentary say, “If you ask this question, you answer it yourself.” They are no gods. They make idols with their own hands. Isaiah has wonderful chapters about this. And here we are in Jeremiah, and the end of chapter 16 is that God is going to restore the Jewish people back to this land and from the north. I remember writing postcards in the 70s to the Russian embassies that say, “Let my people go,” with names like Sharonsky, Edelstein, and others with names asking the Russian government to release these Jews that were imprisoned for their desire to return home and fulfill this prophecy. Yes, dear Christians in Korea and around the world, we are still in the process. We are still in the process of returning the exiles back to this land. And praise God, we have a lot of Jewish disciples of Yeshua who have returned to this land and many who want to return. And we have to pray together that God is going to continue opening the doors for all the Jews, including those Jews that believe that Yeshua is the Messiah.

Yes, the doors are open, and they’re going to open even wider according to the words of the prophet. And it is our job, first of all, to stand with the state of Israel, because in spite of all the trouble, there is nobody else who can open the doors for Israel to be filled with the exiles that are still in the diaspora, in South America, in North America, and the whole question of the anusim, of the Marano Jews that were forced to convert by force by the Catholic Church for over 350 years in the Inquisition, with torture, with courts, with thousands of Jews being burned alive by the Catholic Church. Their descendants need to come back home, need to wake up that they’re not real Catholics because they were forced by the church to convert, and that they need to come back, yes, believing in Yeshua as the Messiah, but voluntarily come back to this land, put their shoulder to the plow, build the land, strengthen the land, join with their blood relations in the restoration of Israel physically, and after the physical, the spiritual will follow.

Stand with us, pray for us, pray for Israel, but pray also for the believers in Yeshua in this land that don’t have a simple life but are here fulfilling the promises that God gave to Jeremiah, the prophet, but also to the other prophets that speak of the same thing. May God bless you.