Nepaug Bible Church - http://www.nepaugchurch.org - Pastor's Prayer Meeting Lesson Notes - http://www.nepaugchurch.org/pm/pm20050119.htm

JEREMIAH: STAYING UPRIGHT AMIDST EVIL PRESSURES
Part IV: Prophecies Concerning Judah
L. Our Accountability Before God For How We Relate To His Servants
(Jeremiah 12:7-17)
  1. Introduction
    1. Scripture holds God's servants to a high level of accountability for how they influence others, Matt. 5:19.
    2. However, subordinates and students who are in God ordained institutions are responsible to respect and heed their overseers and teachers, a fact taught in Jeremiah 12:7-17 as follows:
  2. Our Accountability Before God For How We Relate To His Servants, Jeremiah 12:7-17.
    1. God had raised up the people of Israel and Judah to be a light of the nations to bring them back to God:
      1. After the Noahic Flood, the world's peoples abandoned God at the tower of Babel, Genesis 11:1-9.
      2. To reach this apostate world, God called Abram in Ur, promising to make of him a godly nation, Israel to bless the world as they discipled the nations back to God, Genesis 12:1-3.
    2. However, as we have learned from the first eleven chapters of Jeremiah, God's people failed to disciple the nations, but rather adopted the pagan idolatry of the nations around them and turned against the Lord.
    3. Accordingly, God announced His coming abandonment of Judah to disciplinary destruction by Gentile, Babylonian invaders for their sin against Him, Jeremiah 12:7-13:
      1. God revealed how He would deliver up His beloved people of Judah to her Babylonian invaders, 12:7.
      2. The reason God would do so arose from how His beloved people had turned on Him to repudiate Him much like a vicious lion in the forest would turn on someone who wandered into the woods, 12:8.
      3. Accordingly, God pictured Judah's enemies as wild animals He would summon to devout Judah, 12:9.
      4. Indeed, Judah's enemies would be like many shepherds who would lead their flocks of sheep into a vineyard, destroying its vines without caring about what they were doing, Jer. 12:10-11a, 11b NIV.
      5. God would use Babylon as His sword to level Judah and leave unrest throughout the land, Jer. 12:12.
      6. Indeed, the works of God's people seen in their agricultural plantings would be destroyed, Jer. 12:13.
    4. However, several Gentile nations around Judah took advantage of God's use of the Babylonians to take booty from the inheritance God set apart for His servant, Judah. This sin was met by severe judgment on these Gentiles, Jeremiah 12:14-17:
      1. God noted the Gentile nations (of Syria, Moab and Ammon) would take advantage of Judah's fall to Babylon by gathering booty from their land, Jeremiah 12:14a; Ryrie Study Bib., KJV, ftn. to Jer. 12:14.
      2. For touching the possession that God had given to His servant nation of Judah, God would pluck up these Gentile nations along with His servant, Judah by way of the Babylonian invaders, Jer. 12:14b.
      3. After plucking up these nations, God would compassionately allow them along with His people of Judah to be returned to their own lands, Jeremiah 12:15.
      4. Then, after God restored them, if these Gentile nations would learn the ways of God taught by His people as He had originally planned in the Abrahamic Covenant in contrast to how they had taught His people the apostate ways of Baal worship, God would establish them in the coming millennial world kingdom of His people [headed up by Christ], Jeremiah 12:16.
      5. However, if these Gentile nations would not obey the Lord at that time, God would permanently pluck them up and destroy them for their rebellion against Him, Jeremiah 12:17.
Lesson: The Gentile nations of Syria, Ammon and Moab were SUPPOSED to learn God's ways from the Servant of God, the nation of Judah. Instead, they had taught JUDAH their evil ways of Baal and even had taken booty of the possession of God's servant, Judah when Babylon invaded her. Thus, God disciplined these nations by causing Babylon to invade them, and thus sought to get them back into proper submission to Judah and to God's ways or suffer annihilation as nations.

Application: (1) God holds subordinates in divinely recognized institutions responsible to RESPECT the FUNCTION and even the POSSESSIONS He allots for their overseers. May we thus RESPECT our God ordained overseers and HEED their appropriate instructions! (2) In particular, may we ESPECIALLY RESPECT the God ordained ROLE of His chosen Hebrew people and their possessions!