October 21 – Unpopular Jeremiah still preaches “Obey the LORD” and be blessed!

October 21
Jeremiah 37:1-38:28
1 Timothy 6:1-21
Psalm 89:38-52
Proverbs 25:28

Jeremiah 37:7 – Jeremiah wasn’t a popular guy. He prophesied defeat in the midst of apparent victory. And he said that their wounded were better than Israel’s finest (Jeremiah 37:10).

Jeremiah 37:15 – Jeremiah knew like Paul did what it meant to suffer from his own countrymen (2 Corinthians 11:25).

Jeremiah 38:4 – Compare with Lachish Letter VI:

Who am I, thy slave, a dog, that thou hast sent me the letter of the King and the letters of the officers, saying: “Read, I pray thee, and thou wilt see that words of the prophet are not good, (liable) to weaken the hands, to make sink the hands of the men in city and country.” (This rendering here in part follows Dr. J. W. Jack in The Palestine Exploration Quarterly, July, 1938, pp 176, 181.)

http://nabataea.net/jeremiah.html

Jeremiah 38:5 – From Nabataea.net:

Zedekiah II was obviously a weak character. He allowed himself to be moved by whichever party pressed its will most earnestly upon him (Jeremiah 38:4, 5; cf. vs. 8-10, 19). Beginning his reign as a vassal of Babylon, he served Nebuchadnezzar up to at least his fourth year (594 B.C.), when he made a visit to the city of Babylon (Jeremiah 51. 59). However, the false prophet Hananiah was then already inciting the common people to support revolt against Babylon, by promising the breaking of the Babylonian yoke “within the space of two full years” (Jeremiah 28. 3, 11). Thus there were two differing factions under the rule of Zedekiah II; one faction, which included the princes, sought freedom from the Babylonian domination, and looked to Egypt for military support; the other faction, to which Jeremiah certainly belonged, if he did not actually lead it, believed submission to Babylon to be the right course.

http://nabataea.net/jeremiah.html

Jeremiah 38:16 – Jeremiah said the king will either kill him, or not listen (Jeremiah 38:15). The king promised merely not to kill him.

Jeremiah 38:20 – The voice has cried out throughout the millennia – “Obey, I beseech thee, the voice of the LORD, which I speak unto thee: so it shall be well unto thee, and thy soul shall live.”

“Obey” – the simple command
“I beseech thee” – the personal, emotional appeal of Jeremiah
“the voice of the LORD” – the authority appealed to by Jeremiah
“which I speak unto thee” – Jeremiah is a preacher of the Word
“so it shall be well unto thee” – the promised blessing part 1
“and thy soul shall live” – the promised blessing part 2

1 Timothy 6:1 – Paul taught a radical concept – servants should obey secular masters (not just the believing ones in 1 Timothy 6:2), as honorable, otherwise that was the same as blaspheming God! How we interact in personally undesirable situations is a picture of how we treat God! (Almost as personally undesirable as surrendering to the Babylonians!)

1 Timothy 6:9 – “they that will be rich” – a great description of those that play the lotto. Strangely enough the NY Times ran a story on a “Christian card counting group” that played in casinos. All was “well” except for:

Accusations of cheating arose, stress mounted and at one point the team had a painful losing streak, having racked up $465,000 in losses. Some members failed their exams on their card-counting skills, resulting in being fired from the team. Members got kicked out of hundreds of casinos across the country.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/10/sports/a-card-counting-mix-of-bibles-blackjack-and-cash.html

1 Timothy 6:17 – “Uncertain riches” – here’s just the tip of the iceberg as compiled by David Cloud:

Charles Riddle, who won $1 million in Michigan in 1975, got divorced, faced several lawsuits, and was indicted for selling cocaine.

Evelyn Adams, who won the New Jersey lottery in 1985 and 1986 for a total of $5.4 million, gambled and gave away all her winnings and by 2001 was living in a trailer park.

Teresa Brunnings, who won $1.3 million in a lottery in 1985, says that she had a party then, but, “Of all the people who came, not one speaks to me now.”

Karen Cohen, who won $1 million in the Illinois state lottery in 1984, filed for bankruptcy in 2000 and in 2006 was sentenced to 22 months in jail for lying to federal bankruptcy court.

https://www.wayoflife.org/reports/lottery_fever.html

Psalm 89:48 – The statistics still hold, 10 out of 10 people will die.

Proverbs 25:28 – Patch the Pirate wrote a song about those who have no rule over their spirit – Temper Tantrum Tilly!