 Good morning everyone. Welcome to today's session. So today we're going to study the second book of the major prophets That is the book of Jeremiah Even before we could Begin, I would request one of us to lead us in prayer. Can I request Jeffina to lead us in prayer, please? Yes Jay heavenly father, we come to you under the name of Jesus. Thank you for this beautiful day and for the Amazing class that we're about to have what I pray for everyone who's right here God we ask your presence to fill us your whole spiritual guidance and fill us with understanding Fill us with your knowledge and for everyone who is right here Help them to open their heart and listen to the words so that they can understand this and apply it in their life And enjoy this life every second with you. I pray for the one who is teaching for us I pray that you fill her with wisdom and knowledge and in Jesus name I pray Amen. Amen. Thank you. Thank you. Jeffina. Thank you so much Okay, let me Even before we could start with Jeremiah Yesterday because Isaiah was a long book and I didn't have an opportunity to play a video on the book of prophets and how we can Read the book of prophets keeping the prophets in mind and what type of life they lived in so what is this prophet all about? Are they suit sayers are or are they talking on behalf of God? So I thought even before we could start today's class we can I can share this video Before we couldn't begin with our class. Let me present that video for you That while I present it one of y'all, please let me know if you're if the video is audible Ezekiel Obadiah Habakkuk Was it audible? Yes, well Thank you Ezekiel Obadiah Habakkuk. What do these names have in common? Well, there are three of the 15 prophets that have their own books in the Bible And if you've tried to read these books odds are you got lost in their dense poetry in strange imagery But these books are super important for understanding the overall biblical story. So let's talk about how to read the prophets When I hear the word prophet, I think of a fortune teller someone who predicts the future That's what being a prophet means in many cultures, but not in the Bible while the biblical prophets sometimes speak about the future They're way more than fortune tellers. How should I think about them? Well, they were Israelites who had a radical encounter with God and then were commissioned to go and speak on God's behalf Like a representative right and the thing that they care about the most is the mutual partnership that existed between God and Free in Egypt and invited them to become a nation of justice and generosity that would represent his characters to the nations And so this partnership required all Israelites to give their trust and allegiance to their God alone in the Bible This partnership is called the cup, but the leaders the priests the kings led Israel stray and they broke So this is where the prophets came in to remind Israel of their role in the park And they did this in three ways first They were constantly accusing Israel for violating the terms of the cover the charges usually include idolatry Alliances with other nations and their gods and allowing injustice towards us. That's like covenant lawyers Right. So second the prophets called the Israelites to repent which means simply to turn around They spoke of God's mercy to forgive them if they would just confess change their way But Israel and its leaders didn't change things went from bad to worse And so that brings us to the third way the prophets emphasize the covenant They announced the consequences for breaking it which they called the day of the Lord. Oh, yeah The apocalypse visions of the end of the world. Well, sort of The prophets were mostly interested in how God would bring his justice on Israel's corruption and on the violent nations around And while explaining these local events, they often used cosmic imagery cosmic imagery. Yeah, like Jeremiah He described the exile of the Israelites to Babylon as the undoing of creation itself The land dissolves into chaos and disorder no light no animals or people or as they had described the downfall of Babylon as the Disintegration of the cosmos stars falling from the sky the sun going dark for the prophets when God acts in human history to bring Justice it's a day of the Lord So the prophets aren't talking about the end of the world Well, hold on they're doing many things at once The cosmic imagery shows how these important events of their day fit into the bigger story of God's mission to bring down Every corrupt and violent nation once the prophets cared about the present and the future and the cosmic imagery Allowed them to talk about both at the same time got it So no matter when you live the day of the Lord's bad news if you're part of Babylon But it's good news if you're waiting for God's kingdom the day of the Lord pointed to the return of the exiles to Jerusalem and once again The prophets use cosmic poetry to describe it They see a new Jerusalem like a new garden of each with all humanity living at peace with each other and And there's a new messianic king who restores God's kingdom in a renewed Creation you so those are the three themes in the prophets these prophets must have been very powerful Sweets of speakers well somewhere, but others lived on the margins They would often perform strange symbolic stunts in public to communicate their message Like when Ezekiel lay in the dirt and built a model of Jerusalem being attacked by Babylon Or when Isaiah walked around naked for three years as a symbol of the humiliation of exile So do people pay attention to them? Not really the stories in these books show how the prophets were a minority group Mostly shunned by Israel's leaders and their writings were a kind of resistance literature Most people ignored them that is until their warnings came true in the Babylonian exile and after that people began to take their words Yes, the works of these earlier prophets were inherited by later unnamed prophets who studied these texts intensely They're the ones who arrange the Hebrew scriptures as we know them including the books of the prophets Okay, and there's 15 books of the prophets the big three are Isaiah Jeremiah and Ezekiel and then there's a collection of well smaller prophetic works unified on a single scroll And in each of these books you'll read stories about the prophets and their poems and visions all arranged to show the cosmic meaning of Israel's history how God would turn their tragic story of failure and exile into a story of hope and restoration for all nations That twin message of prophetic warning and of hope that the prophets cared about so much And it's a message that we still need to hear today Yeah, that was a short introduction for the book of prophets Well, uh, now we can begin with our class on Jeremiah. I'll just present up one slide Okay, so the book of the prophet of Jeremiah The author of this book is Jeremiah himself and the date Which this book was written Approximately, maybe 627 to 585 bc and this book contains 52 chapters Before we could move ahead. I see that some of y'all have Just logged in I just admit them Okay, so the introduction of this book is Jeremiah Beginned his prophetic ministry nearly 60 years after the death of Isaiah The book of Jeremiah is an autobiography of Jeremiah Jeremiah's life and ministry during the reign of the last five kings of Judah And this book contains multiple prophecies given at different times It takes some effort to reconstruct the order of the main events of Jeremiah's life As the prophecies are not arranged in the chronological order Well, Jeremiah spoke to a nation about to be destroyed by the Babylonians for 40 years And Jeremiah is also called as the weeping prophet because of his deep sorrow over the Unrepentant nation and the judgment that has been approached to this nation And Jeremiah lived to see his prophecies come true And along acknowledged as one of the great prophet of the Old Testament and Jeremiah serves as an example of Someone who remained faithful to God despite of his Countless hardship that he had to face in his life And with that we see the very purpose of this book Saying that, you know, like God proclaimed that God created and controls everything And that is a sin nature to show that the serious seriousness of Judah's sin demanded divine judgment And we also see God's remedy for sin and we see, uh, you know the divine gift of New heart and we also see God's Person to provide the remedy to predict the renewal of Davidic kingship by the coming Messiah And gods we also see God's plan for redemption over the humanity that messiah will one day establish the millennial Kingdom free from the curse of sin and death And we see Jeremiah also as an Isaiah prophesies Written from exile and have two great future events and mind the return of the Jews from Babylon and redeemed Humanity returned to God in the millennium So with this we also see some of the unique features that Jeremiah was one most persecuted Old Testament prophet He was the only prophet forbidden To pray for his nation And he was the only prophet to record as an eyewitness account to Jerusalem's fall And Jeremiah contains bibles most extended and detail the prophecies about Babylon, which is mentioned 160 For times and Jeremiah referred to another prophet Micah by name So Jeremiah himself was referred to by Daniel. Many of the prophets were contemporaries Only one other writing prophet was Daniel was mentioned by name in print by the fellow prophet and Jeremiah also records the last of the Three most important Unconditional covenant that is the Abrahamic covenant davidic covenant and the new covenant has been mentioned and recorded in this book But this we will move on to the chapter wise study So in chapter one, we see the call of Jeremiah Jeremiah was an israeli Israelite priest, but we don't see much of his priestly ritual been performed But we see him most as a prophet as a prophet And he lived and worked in jerusalem during the final decade of the kingdom of southern Judah and he was a son of Hellkeer of the priest of anathos in the land of benjamin And here we see Jeremiah prophesied from the days of Hosea to the captivity and the lord tells him that he was sanctified in the belly Of his mother to serve god and Jeremiah was anxious He is as a child And he could not speak well The lord touches his mouth. So he will be a prophet unto the Nation and the lord plans are compared to the branch of an elementary which comes to fruit quickly And Jeremiah sees a boiling pot Facing the north and evil shall break forth from the north against the inhabitants of Judah And we see Jeremiah will be protected As he prophesies towards the israelites and We see the pious in nature in him that it carried him where he first Entered the promised land israel It forsaken the lord And gone after other gods Uh, its own backsliding will be its punishment from the right seat We see that israel has become a degenerate wine And here it says You know israel is saying to the wood you are my father And to the stone you give birth to me And this sinful nature, you know israel thinks that he's very nosy but this has been very hurting to god because Israel was going away turning its back to god and going away from god So we see Jeremiah was called as a prophet to warn israel Against their, uh, you know the backsliding nature worshiping the idols and uh, he's also warning them of the severe consequence Which will break, uh, you know, uh, which will lead them to break which is leading severe consequence of breaking the covenant And where god through their idolatry and injustice He even predicted that the empire of this Babylon would come as god servant to bring this judgment on israel By destroying jerusalem and taking away the people into exile So this happened because of their own Backsliding because of their own sin and this is just because of the consequence of their own sin and sadly is words Jeremiah words came to reality and he had to see that and that's when we see Jeremiah Moan the curly and he's been called as a weeping prophet and now in this book You know it comes into exist into the real Interesting way in chapter 36 We see that 20 years of Jeremiah's preaching in jerusalem God called him to collect all his sermons and poems and essays and commit them into writing So where Jeremiah employed a scribe named baruch who wrote down and compiled All of this material into a scroll so that it's been preserved. So now we see baruch ascribe also gathered Lot of stories about Jeremiah and he linked all the pieces together So this is why the book reads like an you know anthology a collection of collections So it's all been arranged to present this prophet as a messenger of God's justice and grace So here we see that the book begins with god calling Jeremiah as a prophet and he gives A dual vocation that he will be a prophet to israel But also to the nations his words will both uproot and tear down But also plant and build up in other words He's going to accuse israel and warn them of god's coming judgment But at the same time he also has a message of hope for the future. So Um We see from chapter one to 24. There's some message here where it says the collection of Jeremiah's writing Before the exile and the very core idea Is that israel has broken the covenant with god and violated all the terms of the agreements they made that are written in the Torah And in a number of ways they adopted the worship of all kinds of canonite gods building idle shrines for them and over the land and Jeremiah develops a metaphor of idle I idol idolatry as idolatry And uses the language of prostitution Unfaithfulness to describe how israel has given their allegation to other gods Well, Jeremiah also repeatedly accuses israel leaders the priests the kings and the other prophets have all become corrupt And they've got and they have abundant the Torah and the covenant which They are made to what god which led them to a tragic result In social injustice the most vulnerable people in israel communities where the widows the orphans the migrants And all we take an advantage of this clear violation against the law of Torah and israel leaders didn't even Didn't even bother of what They were heading to even after many times of burning We also see in chapter seven or in the book of Jeremiah chapter seven that Uh, you know, we see the israel israelites are coming to worship the chord in the temple As if everything is just and fine But at the same time Outside the temple. They are worshiping other gods And some of them they even adopting, uh, you know, uh, even sacrificing their children to the canonite gods. So all This stirs gods wrath against them And so Jeremiah makes a very unpopular announcement That god of israel is coming to judge them He's going to destroy his own temple and punish israelite for You know, uh, israelite for doing all such Evil things against god And god will send an enemy from the north and this is an army that god would allow To conquer Jerusalem And with this we also see in chapter 25 that israel isn't turned back to the god even despite of Many warnings given by Jeremiah to israel and israel has not shown or not Given any kind of interest to Jeremiah words and they never turned back to god So in the first year of the Babylon's new king king Nebuchadnezzar god tells Jeremiah to announce that the Babylonian army are headed for israel And all its neighbors will conquer them and take them into exile for 70 long years And here he compares Babylon to a cup of wine filled to the brim with god's breath At all of israel's injustice and idolatry and god will make israel the nation Drink from this cup now this chapter is a key to the book design because Everything that follows is going to focus and Babylon's coming to attack israel And from chapter 26 to 45 Here we see how Jeremiah Begged israel to turn back He literally cries and mourns saying israel repent Repent from your sinful nature come back to god. He literally cries Begging them But we see israelites ignore the man of god ignore the cry The hearts are so hardened that they are not able to give years to the words Which he's proclaiming He's a time and again Jeremiah is reminding the laws the covenant of god that they have made Towards the living god. He reminds them about the Torah, but then israel israelites hard We're so hard that they were they'd never uh, you know, uh, they never They never gave here to Jeremiah and their heart was so hardened that, you know, they completely rejected him Well, this section also concludes with a large collection of other stories of how Jerusalem was under sage and eventually destroyed by babelone and about how Jeremiah was persecuted all through the time and eventually Jeremiah was kidnapped and taken against as well to egypt to a group of israelite rebels I somebody has just logged in Yeah So we see that how uh, Jeremiah was kidnapped and taken against as well to egypt and by a group of israelite Rebels and now right here in the middle In uh in middle, we see that you know dark stories of disaster and judgment is a collection of Jeremiah's message of hope and israelites israel's future So he picks up on moses prediction that after israel had broken the covenant and gone into exile We see in deuteronomy like god would not abandon his people rather He would renew his covenant with them and transform their heart and Jeremiah also reminds them about the promise Uh that god is going to one day inscribe the law of Torah not on the tablet But rather on each one's heart of his own people and he is going to heal the rebellion nature so that they can truly Be One day love god and worship him in truth and in spirit And so one day israel will return back to the land and the messiah from the line of david is going to come And that's when all nations will come to recognize that israel's god is the true god So we also see in this book that despite israel's apostasy god is not going to let israel sin but rather Gods Through god's own faithfulness He will bring them back and fulfill the promise No matter what they are God will never abandon israel like that, but he will see the ways how he can redeem them So we find a large collection of poems about how god is going to use Babylon You know to judge and about how he is going to redeem israel from the hands of such a wicked kingdom And although god used this nation to execute as justice That is the Babylon and Egypt and Assyrians But god does not endorse their violence in idolatry and We see how god stands To redeem his people from the hands of these kingdom which they were taken as exile. So Jeremiah So the book concludes with a story taken from the end of the book of second kings It tells about Babylon's final attack on Jerusalem and how they destroyed the city walls And burned the temple and took the people into exile Well, the story shows how Jeremiah wants judgment from you know from chapter one to chapter 24. We see how they fulfilled You know the fulfilled all the Jeremiah prophesied and we also witnessed people been going to exile And yeah And that's how the book ends. So it's a little glimmer of hope Though he talks about the judgment at the same time Jeremiah also Gives a hope and he also says there's a future for israel because god is a god of mercy and grace And here he recalls Jeremiah's promise of hope from chapter 32 to 33 we see that god has an Abundant people or the promise of future Coming king from david's line here. We see that he is talking about the messiah Jesus who will come to redeem his people and so while this book contains a huge amount of warning and judgment The final words conclude with a note of hope for the future as well So we also see the portrayal of the shadow of christ in this book where it says the messiah is clearly seen In in chapter 23 the first half of the verse as a coming shepherd And the righteous branch will reign as king and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land So in his days Judah will be saved. He will bring in the new covenant Which will fulfill god's covenant with abraham moses and the people And david so we see that god and israel's relationship began like a marriage God owed to be faithful and israel promised to be lovingly his but israel repeatedly broke that Vav and worshipped and sacrificed the false god So israel even killed their own children in their rituals as we saw in the previous chapters and We we also see Jeremiah called israel as an idolatrous and it worshipped other gods Israel was really committing adultery against god And Jeremiah begged israel to return and repent so that they can be forgiven And be see and and be saved but israel would not listen To Jeremiah because they hard way hard and towards this word So israel chose to break They warped with god and the covenant with god And god promised that he will despite of israel's nature unfaithful nature god You know god promised that he would be faithful As just like a husband. He will be a faithful husband to his adulterous bride So we see the plan of god. He says that in jesus he would begin a new covenant That would transform his people From adultery and make them virgin bride once again So there's kind of a hope in the message though Jeremiah is giving a message of judgment that is Coming upon the people of israel as a consequence of their sin But at the same time we see Jeremiah also give A hope and a future for the israelites that they will not be wiped out But then god is all mindful of redeeming his children Despite of the consequence what they are in so what we learn from this book I Opened this to the class. What do we learn from the book of Jeremiah? What do we learn? Anyone in the class can say this Well, what we learn from this book is we see that God's patience with his people in the old testament reminds us that God has always been And he continues to be merciful And how we can apply it to our times how we can apply it to ourselves personally Though it's chosen people Sometimes we know the covenant that has been made with god and we Try to rebel against god against his teaching Or we go away with our own Own life with the pleasures of our own life But god still gives us a hope Through his mercy and grace he tries to redeem us He speaks to us through the holy spirit who's dwelling within us He gives us many opportunity To repent and turn back to him Though we might have fallen in our own ways But god does not abandon us like that But he gives us new ways where he can redeem us restore us back to that relationship that we have So as god was merciful to the israelites who sinned against god Who broke the covenant and the love with god and still god had the plan of restoration through jesus Today you and i This message we can apply it even though we may go astray we may sin against god. We may go very far at times Or in different areas in our life But here god is saying that he's a god of restorer when we repent our sins when we confess our sins He's a god ready to forgive. He's a god of mercy god of love God of restoration. He opens more opportunities for you and me So that we can be redeemed back. We can be restored back in the relationship through jesus christ Who's in dwelling with us? So with this this book also leaves us with a question Will we follow god wholeheartedly despite Of what consequence we go through in our life? We need to repent and look back to god. So there are some of the highlights here in this book. I will just project it And this is how the whole chapter has been divided chapter One to two we see chapter one. We see the call of jeremiah the prophetic commission and then from chapter two to chapter You know almost yes 46 we see the ministry of Jeremiah the prophecy towards juda and you know the Some chapter two to chapter 30. We see before the fall how the condemnation of juda the Uh Conflicts of jerusalem and later part. We see the fall of juda future Restoration as message of hope has been given to them and then later after the fall the prophecies to the Gentiles and the fall of Jerusalem we see that from 47 to 52 And this is some of the highlights that we discussed from this book We can see that Here some of the highlights. I made a note so that you know Even if we have missed anything in between we can grasp these are the main important things that we Should keep in our mind when we study the book of Jeremiah That the book of Jeremiah records one of juda's greatest prophets prophets during its darkest days and We see many other things your Jeremiah contains the bible's most extended and detailed prophecies about Babylon and mentioning it one 64 times in this book and Jeremiah also records the three important old testament Covenants that is the Abrahamic covenant the davidic covenant and the new covenant and we also see the messiah seen clearly in chapter 23 verse 128 as the coming shepherd and the righteous branch will reign as king And act wisely to justice and righteousness in the land But this we will also Give a reflection that the book of Jeremiah reveals the inner struggles the prophets of God They shared with God how he felt Yet He disobeyed Jeremiah is a yet. He obeyed Jeremiah is a picture of faithfulness to God and Great personal sacrifice in spite unimaginable Opposition so what price we can ask ourselves? What price are we willing to pay in order to be faithful to God? Do we share our feeling to God without any filters? We can ask ourselves and meditate today on the book of Jeremiah as we study Are we faithful to God? Yeah, with this I open to the class you all can share your views your thoughts What was your learning from this book of Jeremiah? Yeah, Divya, you can go ahead speak out Yeah, I was just reflecting on the nature of God Yeah, he he needs to be right like he's a righteous God and he's a just God But uh, he's also merciful Uh, so even though there is uh, you know, uh, so much Provision uh had been given like even Jeremiah is professing in warnings. They did not turn to God Um, and you had to face the judgment We see that in the new covenant how God himself made the way. There's nothing that we have done What God himself made the way so yeah, I was just thinking of the words and Psalms were not three Where it says he's gracious and compassionate Is slow to anger and abounding in love? Yeah Thank you. Thank you. Divya for sharing Very important. Yeah, we also see a question from Elisha like what is the relationship between Prophet's bird and Anna's ministry Can anyone answer that take up that question? Brother lubega or brother subashish. Would you like to answer that? What I feel is uh, the relationship between that is we see that God has called Jeremiah from the mother's womb And God has placed that burden God has called him as a prophet and God has also placed that burden for the Israel nation God actually revealed what he feels for Israel We see the heart of God when Jeremiah wept and burdened for Israel time and again though he was mocked. He was persecuted you know, he had to He was taken into exile and you know, he was put in prison Many things he had to undergo many persecution and struggle He had to go through but despite all God has put this burden within Jeremiah's heart that he had to cry and weep for Israel throughout his life We see him struggle to redeem his trial. We see the heart of God in him Actually, I guess that it was put by God himself that burden for Israel was put by God himself and whenever in fact It says that Jeremiah didn't like this office. But then God used him there And when he was prophesying or when he was talking, uh, though he had difficulty in Speech, um, he was very weak. He was not very bold enough But when the time of prophets uh prophesying came he was bold enough to speak He spoke the word of God with courage Which with boldness So we see that in the old testament we see time and again the spirit of the Lord came upon a person and it went We see that he could prophesy with the spirit of God upon him He could speak boldly and at the same time we see the heart of God on him that he wept for Israel That's why he has been called as a weeping prophet mourned bitterly for israel's nature for their rebellious nature And he mourned so in that morning we see the burden we see the heart of God in him And yes, that's his ministry but as call He was not hardship because he had to go because I was calling even Thank you Okay, as the time's up we can end this class with the word of prayer Can I request Elisha to end this to dismiss us with a word of prayer, please I want to thank you for the land you sinned for That has impacted generation And it has impacted us this morning also We pray that oh god Even as you showed mercy grace to your people Will you continue to show us grace and mercy even when we depart from your And disobey you lord may your love consider first love Continue to draw us to your righteousness and to your holiness in the name of Jesus Father will continue to pray That you establish us in your word so that you will not go away or depart from the word that you will pray that if We have fallen into any activity if we are falling into the hands of our enemies As the israelite fell in the hands of Babylon Lord may you redeem us in the name of Jesus Father will continue to pray That you shall spring us in your grace and your mercy throughout the day Father as we are stepping out of God may you continue to love us with your mighty love in Jesus mighty name amen Amen amen Thank you so much Thank you. Laisha. Thank you so much for each one joining today's class. God bless. See you all tomorrow Thank you. God bless