Jeremiah 23

CHAPTERS 23 AND 24THEME: Bright light in a dark day and parable of two baskets of figsEvery cloud has a silver lining, so the song says, and the dark clouds of the previous chapter also have a silver lining. It never got so dark that the prophets could not see light at the end of the tunnel. After chapter 22, which has the harshest judgment in the Bible against Coniah, the sun breaks through. However, we’ll have two more verses before we see the sun

Jeremiah 23:1

The “pastors” here are not preachers. He will speak about the religious rulers later on. Here the pastors refer to the kings, the politicians, the people who are ruling, the ones who are responsible for the laws of the land. God says, “Woe be unto them.”

Jeremiah 23:2

God said He was going to judge them, and He did. Now the sun breaks through:

Jeremiah 23:3

God says, “The day is coming when I intend to take over, and when I do, the poor will be taken care of.” This refers specifically to the return of the Jews to their land after the present dispensation has closed and the church has been raptured. At that time the King whom they once rejected will tenderly set over them faithful shepherds. It will be an altogether different type of government from what we have in the world now.

Jeremiah 23:5

There is a King coming in David’s line. The king, Coniah and all of his line, although they are in David’s line, shall be rejected and cut off. However, no one can destroy God’s purpose, although they may think they can. God knows what He will do. We know from the New Testament that through another line, the line of Nathan, another son of David, came a peasant by the name of Mary, a girl up in Nazareth, who bore Jesus, the Messiah, the King. When Jesus presented Himself to the world, He said, “…Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mat_4:17). Since you can’t have a kingdom without the king, in effect He was saying to the people, “Your King is here!” The people rejected the King, but He had the last word. He said that someday the King would come back and set up that kingdom.

Jeremiah 23:6

Have you ever heard of this as a plank in a political platform? I have never heard a candidate claim that he is righteous and that he will follow God’s plan and program for government. I’ve heard politicians make almost every other claim under the sun but that one! They wouldn’t dare make it. But righteousness will characterize the Kingdom when the Lord Jesus Christ reigns.

Jeremiah 23:7

This is one of the most remarkable prophecies in the Word of God. The oldest religious holiday celebrated today is the Jewish Passover. Regardless of whether the Jew is reformed or orthodox, he remembers the Passover, because it is the celebration of the miraculous deliverance of the Jews out of Egypt. Now God is saying, “The day is coming when I will bring them back into their land that they will forget the deliverance out of Egypt and they will remember this new deliverance which I intend to accomplish.” It will be that tremendous! Obviously God is not through with the nation Israel, my friend.

Jeremiah 23:16

The false prophets persisted in prophesying peace. God repudiates them. Today there are dreamers who are talking about how they are going to bring in world peace, and all of them are talking along that same line. God says, “You won’t do ityou can’t do it.” God said through Isaiah, “There is no peace …unto the wicked” (Isa_48:22). The problem is not that the people don’t want peace; the trouble is that the heart of man is desperately wicked. We don’t realize how bad we really are. Wicked men in power today cannot bring peace on this earth. If they could, it would be a contradiction of the Word of God. God turns now to the religious rulers.

Jeremiah 23:21

He has already said you can’t trust the political rulers. They cannot bring in peace. They ignore the poor. Now God says that He did not send the bunch of prophets that were filling the land in that day. God denies that their message comes from Him. God rejected both the political rulers and the religious rulers. Today I believe that God would say the same thing to the world. Who is seeking God in our day? The religious rulers of the world are out for religion. They are religious up to their eyebrows and are so pious, but how many of them are seeking out the living and true God?

Jeremiah 23:30

The contemporary liberal theologians are casting reflections upon the Word of God, saying it is not truly the Word of God, thereby stealing it out of the hearts of the people. I would cringe if I were one of the godless college professors or godless preachers who is wrecking the faith of believers. God says that He is going to do something about it someday. God is in no hurrydon’t be deceived because God’s judgment against an evil work is not executed speedily. That day of judgment is coming. It is in the hearts of the sons of man to do evil. They think they are getting by with it. God says, “I have eternity ahead of Me, and I am still running this show. The time will come when I will judge the religious rulers.” Chapter 24 is a sort of appendix, relating a vision given after Jeconiah had been carried away into captivity. Therefore it was during the early part of Zedekiah’s reign. In a vision Jeremiah was shown two baskets of figs (the fig tree is a well-known symbol of Judah). One basket contained good figs and the other very bad figs. They symbolized two classes of people in Judah.