Title: 13
Author: Joe Griffin
Last saved by: PaulD
Company: GDC

The Church of the Living God

		08-12-28-A.FBC08-53 /

Judgment for Idolatry: Parental Behavior Repeated by Their Children, Jer 17:1-4; Prophecy of 625 b.c. Fulfilled when Chaldea Destroys Judah in 586 b.c.

(NOTE:	No second session.)
Jeremiah 17:1 -	The sin of Judah is being engraved [ bt^K* kathav: Qal passive participle: sin receives the action of being written in stone ] with an iron chisel [ fu@ ʻet: a stylus ] and inscribed [ vr^j* charash: to engrave metal ] with a diamond [ rym!v* shamir: flint, emery, or adamant stone ] tip  on the tablets  [ j^Wl luach: stone tablet ] of their hearts and the horns [ /r#q# qeren: brass projections on the corners of altars ] of their altars [ these actions imply volitional choice ].
v. 2 -	Their children [ /B@ ben: children in general ] remember [ rk^z* zachar: memory pertains to places & objects to which the one remembering clings (Jer 17:2) ] their altars and their sacred poles dedicated to the goddess Asherah [ the Baal cult ], set up beside the green trees on the high hills.

Ernst Jenni and Claus Westermann, “rk^z* zkr to remember,” in Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament trans. Mark E. Biddle (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997), 1:383.

24.	When children are exposed to the lie and especially the propaganda that puts no restraint on sexual activity prior to marriage, then the equivalent is a modern version of the phallic cult as practiced by the Israelites in the days of Jeremiah.
25.	Notice in the definition of zachar, the verb “to remember,” that the things the children recall are the places and objects of the phallic cult.
26.	The sin of Judah was a base form of idolatry that became so facilitated that the Holy Spirit’s condemnation sarcastically utilizes imagery taken from the giving of the Ten Commandments.
27.	The Ten Commandments were written in stone by the finger of God.  Their concepts were to be written into permanent wheel-tracks of righteousness upon the tablets of the heart of every Israelite so he could remember them in his daily life.
28.	Having reverted to the worship of false gods and its salacious practices, recall of the Law had been inhibited while the worship of Baal and Asherah has become facilitated.
29.	These beliefs and behaviors are said to be “engraved,” using an “iron stylus” with a “diamond tip,” upon the “tablets of their hearts.”
30.	Where the Law was once written on a receptive heart it was now replaced by the phallic cult written on hearts of stone.
31.	The parents’ responsibility was to teach doctrine to their children, which included a reverence for the various sacrifices, feast days, and festivals required by the Law.
Deuteronomy 6:4 -	“Hear, O Israel!  The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!
v. 5 -	“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
v. 6 -	“These words I am commanding you today must be kept in your heart.
v. 7 -	You must teach them diligently [ /n^v* shanan: intensive form: to teach incisively ] to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.

The idea here is that just as words are cut into a stone tablet with a sharp object, so the Law should be impressed on the hearts of the children of every generation.  Warren Baker and Eugene Carpenter, “/n^v* šānan,” The Complete Word Study Dictionary: Old Testament (Chattanooga: AMG Publishers, 2003), 1179.

31.	Instead of sacrifices at the temple, where the blood of the sacrificial lamb was smeared on the horns of the brass altar, they now smeared the blood on the altar of Baal where they had engraved references to their sinful activities related to their cultic worship.
32.	Having turned their backs on the truth, the Israelites bought the lie and followed after their own appetites while allowing their children to be corrupted in the process.
33.	The Lord will not for long put up with this kind of crap.  Eventually the hammer of judgment falls as the next two verses demonstrate:
Jeremiah 17:3 -	O My mountain in the field [ idiom for Mount Zion or Jerusalem ], I will give your wealth and all your treasures away as plunder.  I will give it away as the price for the sins you have committed throughout your land.
v. 4 -	And you will lose your hold on the land which I gave to you as a permanent possession.  I will make you serve your enemies in a land that you know nothing about [ Chaldea ].  
34.	This is a prophecy of the cycles of discipline to Judah which occurred in three stages over a period of twenty years.  Jeremiah’s prophecies were recorded in 625 b.c.  In 605 b.c., the sequence of events that took Judah out as a client nation began.  A brief synopsis of Judah’s fall is provided by R. B. Thieme, Jr.’s Daniel: Chapter 1:
Historical Background.  In 625 b.c., Nabopolassar suddenly appeared out of nowhere.  He organized his scattered forces and took over Babylonia, which was then under Assyrian rule.  From that time on, Babylonia was called Chaldea.
When Nabopolassar and his clans, called “bits,” marched on Babylon, the Assyrians declared war on him.  With the help of the Medes and the Scythians, Assyria was finally conquered in 612 b.c.  (p. 7)
Several years later, Egypt, as the hopeful heir to the Assyrian Empire, challenged Chaldea.  At the Battle of Carchemish on the Euphrates River, the Egyptians were thoroughly and decisively defeated by Nebuchadnezzar, son of Nabopolassar.  (p. 8)
To avoid historical confusion, one must be aware of the fact that there were three invasions of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans.  In 605 b.c., after Nebuchadnezzar’s stunning victory over Egypt, he besieged Jerusalem for the first time; on this occasion, Daniel was taken into captivity.  The city was not demolished; Jehoiakim, the king, was left on the throne, but part of the wealth was confiscated.  Also, as was the custom, a number of boys from the royal line were taken as hostages to be trained in the ways of the Chaldeans.  (pp. 7-8)
In 598 b.c., there was a second invasion and siege of Jerusalem.  At that time, the Prophet Ezekiel and Jehoiachin the king were numbered among the captives taken to Babylon.
Nebuchadnezzar came to Jerusalem a third time.  After a siege of eighteen months, the city was completely devastated in 586 b.c., and the third deportation took place.  That was the beginning of the fifth cycle of discipline to Judah—a discipline that lasted seventy years.  (p. 9)

R. B. Thieme, Jr., “Daniel 1: Historical Background,” in Daniel: Chapters 1through 6, 3d ed. (Houston: R. B. Thieme, Jr., Bible Ministries, 1996), 7-9.

35.	My message to you is that the circumstances that led to the downfall of Judah are present in the United States today.  There are many symptoms but the cause is “lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6).
36.	That this should be the case for our client nation seems incongruous to serious students of the Word of God, yet sadly, it is all too true.

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