Joshua and Judges: Abrahamic Covenant and its fulfillment in the Millennium, part 6. Eze 16:30-43; Jer 3:6-10.

Title: Joshua and Judges: Abrahamic Covenant and its fulfillment in the Millennium, part 6. EZE 16:30-43; JER 3:6-10.

 

Announcements / opening prayer:

 

 

Donald Barnhouse writes a story about himself and two other boys who desired to play a practical joke. They went to a busy intersection (1915) and stared intently up in the air. They pointed up and one would say, "It is so," and the other, "It's not." First one or two people stopped to look up and then more. As their played out argument got more heated more people stopped and stared into the sky where there was nothing. One man said to another, "I think it's a balloon." After 20 minutes people were still there desperately trying to find what wasn't there. That little incident is a good illustration of all the earth-born religions, which in the case of our study is the worship of Baal. People talk about having faith and they tell you to look in a direction where there is absolutely nothing. Some people are so desperately in need of seeing something that they will look until they are blind, and they even convince themselves that there is something there, yet they never catch a glimpse of anything real. Their persistence in looking for something that does not exist reduces their vision to see the truth, which they really do not want to find.

 

Stage one: The Marriage Contract - Deuteronomy.

Moses took various facets of the three earlier books and presented them in the form of an ancient marriage contract.

 

Stage Two: The Great Adultery.

Although Israel was firmly admonished to remain faithful to her Husband, she was guilty of great adultery.

 

Although prostitutes generally receive money for their services, Israel paid them with the very things that her true Husband had given her. She valued her adultery above money.

 

Furthermore, Israel's very children, who belonged to God, were sacrificed to these false lovers. [jumping the shark]

 

Israel forgot the love of her youth when God first entered into the covenant relationship with her.

 

God makes the point that His wife bribed and paid her lovers and so how languishing is her heart?

 

EZE 16:30 "How languishing is your heart," declares the Lord God, "while you do all these things, the actions of a bold-faced harlot.

 

EZE 16:31 "When you built your shrine at the beginning of every street and made your high place in every square, in disdaining money, you were not like a harlot.

 

At least the harlot has the goal of receiving money, but Israel was a harlot that paid, meaning that the most important thing to her was the adultery itself.

 

That's a love of harlotry against God over and above a love of money.

 

EZE 16:32 "You adulteress wife, who takes strangers instead of her husband!

 

EZE 16:33 "Men give gifts to all harlots, but you give your gifts to all your lovers to bribe them to come to you from every direction for your harlotries.

 

EZE 16:34 "Thus you are different from those women in your harlotries, in that no one plays the harlot as you do, because you give money and no money is given you; thus you are different."

 

Stage 3: Separation - Because of this adultery, in the days of Isaiah a separation took place - the loss of blessing, yet here there is still time to recover.

 

ISA 50:1 Thus says the Lord,

"Where is the certificate of divorce,

By which I have sent your mother away?

Or to whom of My creditors did I sell you?

Behold, you were sold for your iniquities,

And for your transgressions your mother was sent away.

 

According to DEU 24:1, if a husband wished to divorce his wife, he had to write out a bill of divorcement. After having written it out in longhand, he would give it to his wife and then the divorce was final. By the time Isaiah became a prophet, Israel's adultery was so great that is was necessary for God to withhold His many blessings from her: the blessing described in the book of Deuteronomy, which were to be received if Israel remained faithful. This removal of material provisions caused many in Israel to say that God had divorced His wife. Therefore God spoke to Isaiah stating that He had not yet divorced His wife, for if He had, He would have written them a certificate, but He did not. The evidence of their divorce would have been captivity and dispersion but that had not yet happened. They still lived in the land of promise, though for a long time they had lived under great discipline. There was still a chance to return to the Lord before they were sold, which refers to the captivity of the northern kingdom in 721 BC and the southern kingdom in 586 BC.

 

To the southern kingdom God says:

 

JER 3:12-13

'Return, faithless Israel,' declares the Lord;

'I will not look upon you in anger.

For I am gracious,' declares the Lord;

'I will not be angry forever.

'Only acknowledge your iniquity,

That you have transgressed against the Lord your God

 

We see the captivity in the second part of the verse and for the reason of their own sins. The mother most likely refers to the older generation.

 

Both the old and the young will be taken from the land if they do not heed the intense warning that has come with the separation.

 

Israel has not been blessed but has faced much loss of prosperity for 100 years. They continued to see bad crops and poor economies as well as any other number of ways that God can discipline and they continued to blame something or someone else than themselves and their bold-faced harlotry.

 

Stage 4: The Divorce.

Even the years of separation did not cause her to return to her Husband, thus God was forced to finally issue a bill of divorce.

 

The divorce of the northern kingdom will be first. The southern kingdom was guilty of the same sins but not to the same extent and so Judah was spared, but her witnessing the captivity of Israel did not have the effect that it should have had - to change her heart, and so Judah will soon follow and also be divorced by God.

 

When Judah witnessed the captivity of Israel they still did not heed the warning. Did they imagine that such things could happen to others but not to themselves?

 

Jeremiah is the prophet sent to the southern kingdom to warn her, but she would not listen.

 

Remember, the marriage contract is based on the conditional covenant.

 

JER 3:6 Then the Lord said to me in the days of Josiah the king, "Have you seen what faithless Israel did? She went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and she was a harlot there.

 

JER 3:7 "And I thought, 'After she has done all these things, she will return to Me'; but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it.

 

JER 3:8 "And I saw that for all the adulteries of faithless Israel, I had sent her away and given her a writ of divorce, yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear; but she went and was a harlot also.

 

JER 3:9 "And it came about because of the lightness of her harlotry, that she polluted the land and committed adultery with stones and trees.

 

JER 3:10 "And yet in spite of all this her treacherous sister Judah did not return to Me with all her heart, but rather in deception," declares the Lord. 

 

After once again declaring Israel guilty of adultery in vv. 6-8, God finally issued His bill of divorcement.

 

To a great extent, almost all of Jeremiah can be called God's bill of divorcement of Israel.

 

Stage 5: The Punishment.

Several OT prophecies speak of the punishment of Israel for her unfaithfulness in adultery.

 

EZE 16:35 Therefore, O harlot, hear the word of the Lord.

 

EZE 16:36 Thus says the Lord God, "Because your lewdness was poured out and your nakedness uncovered through your harlotries with your lovers and with all your detestable idols, and because of the blood of your sons which you gave to idols,

 

EZE 16:37 therefore, behold, I shall gather all your lovers with whom you took pleasure, even all those whom you loved and all those whom you hated. So I shall gather them against you from every direction and expose your nakedness to them that they may see all your nakedness.

 

EZE 16:38 "Thus I shall judge you, like women who commit adultery or shed blood are judged; and I shall bring on you the blood of wrath and jealousy.

 

EZE 16:39 "I shall also give you into the hands of your lovers, and they will tear down your shrines, demolish your high places, strip you of your clothing, take away your jewels, and will leave you naked and bare.

 

EZE 16:40 "They will incite a crowd against you, and they will stone you and cut you to pieces with their swords.

 

EZE 16:41 "And they will burn your houses with fire and execute judgments on you in the sight of many women. Then I shall stop you from playing the harlot, and you will also no longer pay your lovers.

 

EZE 16:42 "So I shall calm My fury against you, and My jealousy will depart from you, and I shall be pacified and angry no more.

 

EZE 16:43 "Because you have not remembered the days of your youth but have enraged Me by all these things, behold, I in turn will bring your conduct down on your own head," declares the Lord God, "so that you will not commit this lewdness on top of all your other abominations.

 

The nations who worshipped the very gods Israel committed adultery with will be the ones who will invade and destroy the nation of Israel and Judah.

 

Remember, the book of Deuteronomy, the marriage contract, declared that the punishment of Israel would be a result of God's jealousy for His wife.

 

Yet the punishment is not so God can be vengeful, but rather to cause her to stop sinning in her adulteries.

 

All divine discipline is for this purpose. God does so out of love knowing the benefits to us that accrue when we follow Him over and above our own way.

 

Judah does return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple and the city and they again fill the land, but they never again have a king until the first coming of the Son of God, whom they reject and crucify. So then we might conclude that the divorce occurred for Judah at the Babylonian captivity but its finality was withheld until the rejection of Christ. Over and above the subtleties of labeling the divorce is the fact of the divorce.

 

Later in this chapter Ezekiel showed that this punishment was necessary because Israel broke the marriage contract.

 

EZE 16:58 "You have borne the penalty of your lewdness and abominations," the Lord declares.

 

EZE 16:59 For thus says the Lord God, "I will also do with you as you have done, you who have despised the oath by breaking the covenant.

 

Hosea was a prophet of the final years of the northern kingdom, and his book represents, in skillful and impassioned language, the troubles of these years.

 

HOS 2:13

"And I will punish her for the days of the Baals

When she used to offer sacrifices to them

And adorn herself with her earrings and jewelry,

And follow her lovers, so that she forgot Me," declares the Lord.

 

They were strictly warned in the marriage contract not to forget the source of all their blessings.

 

DEU 6:12

then watch yourself, lest you forget the Lord who brought you from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

 

Although God has a long program of punishment for Israel's iniquities against Him, throughout the period of punishment there is a continual call to repentance.

 

The HOS 2:13 passage is addressed to Israel, the northern kingdom, but it applies to all Jews in all generations, up to our day and continuing until the second coming of Christ. All who return to Him and acknowledge their rejection of Him will enter in with Christ, whether those who survive the Tribulation or those who have died before and will be resurrected.

 

JER 3:11 And the Lord said to me, "Faithless Israel has proved herself more righteous than treacherous Judah.

 

In other words, faithless Israel, which has been destroyed over one hundred years prior was not as bad as Judah has now become.

 

JER 3:12 "Go, and proclaim these words toward the north and say,

'Return, faithless Israel,' declares the Lord; 'I will not look upon you in anger. For I am gracious,' declares the Lord; 'I will not be angry forever.

 

JER 3:13 'Only acknowledge your iniquity, That you have transgressed against the Lord your God And have scattered your favors to the strangers under every green tree, And you have not obeyed My voice,' declares the Lord.

 

JER 3:14 'Return, O faithless sons,' declares the Lord; 'For I am a master to you, And I will take you one from a city and two from a family, And I will bring you to Zion.'

 

JER 3:15 "Then I will give you shepherds after My own heart, who will feed you on knowledge and understanding.

 

JER 3:16 "And it shall be in those days when you are multiplied and increased in the land," declares the Lord, "they shall say no more, 'The ark of the covenant of the Lord.' And it shall not come to mind, nor shall they remember it, nor shall they miss it, nor shall it be made again.

 

JER 3:17 "At that time they shall call Jerusalem 'The Throne of the Lord,' and all the nations will be gathered to it, to Jerusalem, for the name of the Lord; nor shall they walk anymore after the stubbornness of their evil heart.

 

JER 3:18 "In those days the house of Judah will walk with the house of Israel [sticks - Ezekiel], and they will come together from the land of the north to the land that I gave your fathers as an inheritance.

 

All of these beautiful material blessings are promised to Israel and are awaiting her return to her Husband. [Fruchtenbaum, Israelology]

 

To this day Israel is still in this stage of divorce and punishment. It is clear that the Jews during the church age have been greatly persecuted and that they are still dispersed world-wide.

 

If this were the end of it, then the door might be left open a bit for anti-Semitism in some people's eyes. But this is not the end, there is one more stage to come.

 

Stage 6: The Remarriage with restored blessings. A new marriage contract under an unconditional New-covenant.