By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
Nations come and nations go. Empires rise and empires fall. Cities blossom and flourish, then moulder into dust.
When a nation has a leader with grand ideas and a strong desire for power, its neighbours must pay heed to their defences. Armies swell and walls are built or strengthened to protect important cities. Watchers are placed at borders and leaders must decide what defensive action is best.Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
Many prophets of God saw unusual sights and strange visions. At times, it is hard to tell whether what they were seeing was real, a vision or a dream. In Jeremiah 25:15-38, God gave Jeremiah a cup – God’s cup of anger – to take to many different nations. Verse 18 talks of those nations being ruined “as at this day”, which suggests that this part of the text was written some time after the prophecy was fulfilled.Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon was trying to build an empire by picking off one enemy nation at a time. The nations around Israel knew this and were doing their best to form a coalition and fight King Nebuchadnezzar together. They sent envoys to Jerusalem for an international conference to arrange joint resistance. Of course, communication requires shared language and there were many different languages around Israel.
Sometimes, however, actions can communicate when language cannot, and while the envoys were there, God told Jeremiah to make a yoke and wear it – acting out a symbol of servitude for the foreign kings whose envoys had gone to Jerusalem (Jeremiah 27:1-11).
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By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
Comfort is important to us. To get comfortable, we will often be willing to spend a lot of money or work very hard – maybe even change our job or move to a different house, town or country. Some prophets, however, could not avoid the stocks in the Bible: it was all part of doing their job.
We do our best to avoid discomfort and expect others to do the same, so when we look at the lives of prophets in the Bible, the difference stands out.Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
Have you ever wondered what a prophet of God did when he wasn’t prophesying?
Of the people who we know as prophets, many seem to have been used by God on only a few occasions. For example, Abraham, Oded (2 Chronicles 28:9), Uriah (Jeremiah 26:20) and various other prophets who aren’t even named.Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
Sometimes when we have a pet theory – but little evidence! – we use arguments from silence. For example, we might argue that since something has not been reported as happening, this is proof that it never happened. Of course, it’s not proof at all, because history doesn’t report most things that happen. Arguments from silence don’t prove anything, however it is valuable at times to observe things about which the Bible is silent and ponder what the reasons for the silence might be. Let’s look at things missing from Jeremiah – events or facts which the book of Jeremiah does not mention.Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
In the times of Jeremiah, God often used the picture of unfaithfulness in marriage, and even divorce, to show how terrible the behaviour of Israel and Judah was when they worshipped other gods. This lesson has now lost its power in many countries of the world because unfaithfulness and adultery are not viewed as seriously as God views them.Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | David , Jeremiah
Many countries that have kings or queens, and even those with prime ministers or presidents, have ornate ceremonies for appointing a new person to the position. The rules for choosing who the new leader will be and the associated rituals are considered important and followed carefully. The same was true for anointing Bible kings.Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
We all like to think that we have made a difference in the world. King Josiah was a righteous king, but did he make a difference in his kingdom? Was Josiah a success?
King Josiah reigned near the end of the kingdom of Judah, about 600 years before Jesus Christ was born. He is described in 2 Kings 23:25:
“Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him.”Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah , Minor prophets
We often read of the worship of “other gods” in the Bible – in both the Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament, we read of different nations worshipping their own individual gods, but the nation of Israel seemed to want to worship all of the available gods!Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
From time to time over many years, the following question has popped to my mind: Did the people of Israel and Judah keep the Sabbath day during the period of the kings? Keeping the Sabbath was one of the Ten Commandments, but did God’s people keep the day holy as God had said?Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
The book of Jeremiah was originally written in Hebrew. What we read as the book of Jeremiah in our English Bibles is mostly translated from this Hebrew version. However, the Old Testament – including Jeremiah – was translated into common Greek about 250 years before Christ. Thus Jeremiah in the Septuagint is in Greek.Continue reading