Week 23 - Jeremiah 19-22, 1st John 1 (June 4 - 10)

Notes

HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE FALL OF JERUSALEM

Jeremiah 21 is the most explicit that the prophet has been about the shape and form of God’s judgment against Judah. This is how that judgment played out in history:

After the fall of the Assyrian empire, there was uncertainty about which power(s) would rise to the top at the end of the 7th century BC.  Egypt was a contender as a regional power with empirical aspirations, and Jehoahaz (the son and successor of Josiah) was taken prisoner by the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho II.  Egypt was closer to Judah than any other regional power, so there was a natural inclination for Judah to ally with and fall under the empire which Egypt was angling for.  This is not the first time we have witnessed this phenomenon in the Bible,  you may remember the prophet Isaiah warning Judah against trusting in Egypt more than a century earlier when they faced pressure from the Assyrians.  Isaiah's advice was not heeded,  Egypt was almost no help to Judah, the Assyrians laid siege to Jerusalem, and only a miraculous act of God saved the city from that moment.

In the East,  the Babylonians had overtaken the center of the Assyrian empire under King Nabopolassar.  Nabopolassar had dispatched his son,  Nebuchadnezzar, to confront the Egyptians who were moving east.  Nebuchadnezzar and the Egyptian Pharaoh Neco II met at Carchemish on the Euphrates River in 605 BC, and Egypt was soundly defeated there.  That same year,  Nabopolassar died, Nebuchadnezzar became king, and, following the defeat of the Egyptians,  Jehoiakim (king of Judah) became a Babylonian vassal.  However, this tendency of Judah to side with Egypt did not end there.  Nebuchadnezzar and Necho II met again, this time in the Sinai in 601 BC as Nebuchadnezzar attempted to invade Egypt.  This battle ended in a draw and Judah, under Jehoiakim, was encouraged to once again ally with Egypt against Babylon.  That made Nebuchadnezzar really mad.  Nebuchadnezzar marched against Jerusalem in 598/597 BC. Jehoiakim died during the siege, and his son Jehoiachin became king and was promptly exiled to Babylon along with many other important people from Judah, including the royal family, their advisers, the nobility, the priesthood, craftsmen, and skilled artisans - this was the first batch of exiles taken from Jerusalem.  This would have been the occasion when Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were exiled.

Nebuchadnezzar picked one of Josiah's sons, Zedekiah (an uncle to Jehoiachin), to rule in Jerusalem and be his subject.   However, Zedekiah had his own ideas about Babylon and began meeting with ambassadors from Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon to discuss the prospects of rebellion against Babylon (see Jeremiah 27:1-3).  in 589 BC, Zedekiah rebelled against Babylon by withholding tribute and allying with the Egyptian pharaoh, Hophra;  You can imagine how Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon would feel about that. In January of 587, Nebuchadnezzar's troops arrived at Jerusalem and put it under siege while destroying the other fortified cities of Judah.  Egypt (surprisingly) actually showed up later that year to aid in Judah's defense, but Egypt was soundly defeated and turned back by the Babylonians.  With the Egyptians defeated Nebuchadnezzar turned his full attention to Jerusalem, where they built siege ramps to breach the city's northern walls. The walls were breached in August of 586 BC.  Jerusalem was demolished and burned, and even more, Israelites were taken into exile by Babylon at this time. 

CHRONOLOGY OF JEREMIAH

It is really important to realize that the book of Jeremiah has not been compiled in chronological order.  Many times, this book will tell you the historical setting at the beginning of a new section; often times by telling you which king is reigning in Judah.  The trouble is, that almost nobody, pastor Joel included, has the order of kings at the end of the kingdom of Judah memorized.  if you've read the historical account written above, and you keep this little chart of the kings of Judah handy, you'll have a much easier time understanding the utterances of the prophet Jeremiah.  Notice the setting described at the beginning of chapter 24:

Above is a chart showing the succession of the kings of Judah from Hezekiah, to the Babylonian invasion and destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC

After Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim king of Judah and the officials, the skilled workers and the artisans of Judah were carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, the Lord showed me two baskets of figs placed in front of the temple of the Lord. (Jeremiah 24:1)

and compare that to the setting for chapter 25:

The word came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah,

and then chapter 26:

Early in the reign of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, this word came from the Lord:

Those are three consecutive chapters in our reading in which we are going backwards in time, and that is why you have to pay such close attention to the history of Judah in the time of Jeremiah.

JEREMIAH 22:14: CEDAR PANELS

In chapter 22, God is speaking a condemnation of the evil kings of Judah through Jeremiah.  God focuses on their use of, and trust in, wealth instead of faithfulness to God and the faithful administration of justice.  In this condemnation, we read the verse: 

He says, ‘I will build myself a great palace
with spacious upper rooms.’
So he makes large windows in it,
panels it with cedar
and decorates it in red.

"Cedar paneling was considered the most luxurious and expensive material that could be used, often more costly than even hammered out precious metals . It was used almost exclusively in palaces and temples. Wall painting is not widely attested in Israelite excavations but is well known in the larger Near Eastern context." (IVP Bible Background Commentary).

God is pointing out that the kings of Judah have forsaken his covenant and commands to pursue luxury and the comforts of wealth.  Here, the lesson for 21st century Christians in America, just leaps off the page. it is not that wealth and luxury could not be enjoyed,  after all, David had a palace laden with cedar, but that faithfulness to God must be our first pursuit.  

The Books of 1-3 John

1ST, 2ND, & 3RD JOHN

Date of Authorship:  There is little internal (belonging to the text) material that we can use to date the text of these three epistles. Carson and Moo (An Introduction to the New Testament) see 1st John as a response to some proto-gnostic heresy that had misread some of the material in his Gospel. Gnosticism was a religious system with some elements of Judaism, Christianity, and Greek mythology that was highly spiritualistic and dualistic - regarding the physical realm as mostly evil and turning instead to a transcendental spiritualism that reached its peak in the 2nd century AD (an Early Church father, Irenaeus devotes most of his writing to describing and confronting this heresy around 200 AD). This understanding of 1st John, combined with the belief that his Gospel was written in 80-85 AD, and consideration of a reasonable lifespan for the apostle lead Carson and Moo to date the book tentatively to 90 AD. 2nd and 3rd John can best be dated anywhere from the authorship of John’s gospel in (as early as) 80 AD to shortly after the authorship of 1st John in roughly 90 AD.

Author: John is the author of these three epistles. 1st John does not describe its author in any way, while 2nd and 3rd John refer to the author as the Elder. The best support for Johanine authorship is the striking similarity in vocabulary and literary style between these letters and the fourth Gospel, authored by “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”

Purpose: In 1st John 2:18-19, John indicates that the audience for his letters has seen some secession from the faith by a particular group of heretics. Their heresy centered around the denial that Jesus was the Christ (2:22). If 1st John is a confrontation of proto-gnosticism as theorized above, the heretics would be denying that the human (physical/fleshy) Jesus could have been the Christ, insisting instead that he may have been temporarily possessed with the spirit of the Christ, who would have departed before his death or some other style of separation/distinction between the human Jesus and the spiritual Christ. John stresses the truth that Jesus is Christ come in the flesh and that genuine belief in this Jesus works itself out on obedience to the commands of God and in love for God’s people. The purpose of 2nd John is primarily to warn a congregation or house Church against admitting traveling teachers who espouse such false teaching. 3rd John is nothing other than an apostolic warning against someone who is attempting to appropriate all local authority and is causing disunity.