Daniel Lesson 18

Babylonian Exile of Jews I – Psalm 137, Jeremiah 29:1-10

We had a question on Daniel 5 on the handwriting. The question was: why in the King James do we have UPHARSIN and PERES, why is the same word written two different ways? The same word is written two different ways because in the Aramaic language there are consonants, this “n” is an ending on the word, but the consonants are “p” “r” and “s” or “s” is interchangeable with “sh” “r” and “p.” And you supply the vowels. This is one of the things as you prepare as a pastor-teacher that you have to understand the Greek and the Hebrew. If I go to take a course in French literature I expect that the professor knows French so obviously if you are a student of the Word of God your pastor-teacher should be qualified in the language. So UPHARSIN and PERES basically are two verbal renditions of the same set of consonants, so it is the same word, it’s not a different word. It’s just the way the vowels are set into the text. The original text didn’t have any vowels so all these vowels are supplied and it’s the same word.

Now the fall of Babylon was a fulfillment of a prayer that had been made years ago; years before that fateful night of October 12, 539 BC was a man who made a prayer along one of the great canals in the city of Babylon, or in the environment around the city of Babylon. The fall of Babylon was an answer to a prayer that that man made one day. That prayer is given to us in probably one of the most famous Psalms of the imprecatory class, Psalm 137. Psalm 137 is a Psalm that is known because the last verse is a prayer that the baby’s heads be bashed against the wall. It’s probably one of the most vicious prayer requests ever made and it was made in the filling of the Holy Spirit; it was made as unto the Lord. And so we must study Psalm 137 to find out why a person can be filled with the Holy Spirit and pray that baby’s heads be split apart.

Psalm 137 involves a massive amount of background and thinking in theology, so we will spend two weeks on the prayer of Psalm 137 with the background. Psalm 137 is an individual lament Psalm. An individual lament Psalm, this class, constitutes most of the Psalms of the Bible. Individual lament Psalms generally have the following structure: they have an address, they have a lament about a particular problem or situation in life; they have a confidence section, they have some petition and they have a praise section or a vow to praise when the answer comes. And when we study individual lament Psalms we look for these sections, always. This is just a style of writing and the men who wrote the Bible followed this style. So if we suspect the Psalm is an individual lament Psalm, instead of just reading it verse by verse, back off for a minute, read it carefully and then look at the structure. So we’ll read Psalm 137.

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. [2] We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. [3] For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. [4] How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a strange land? [5] If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. [6] If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. [7] Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Raze it, raze it, even to the foundation thereof. [8] O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. [9] Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.”

Obviously this is an individual lament Psalm, the psalmist who is writing this is in difficulty, he’s in a straight, he’s complaining to God. The individual lament Psalms are psalms of complaint. Now in this particular Psalm the first two sections are combined together in verses 1-4; verses 1-4 is a lament; notice it gives you a geographical area, it is plural, it is a looking back. We “sat” by the rivers of Babylon, “we hanged our harps,” “there they that carried us” required of us, and “How shall we sin the LORD’s song in a strange land.” So that’s his frustration, verses 1-4, the lament section. We could entitle verses 1-4 that the psalmist recalls his Babylonian experience of frustration.

Then verses 5-6 “If I forget thee,” then let something happen; “If I do not remember them” then let something happen. This is the confidence section. This is an expression where he has vowed he has absolute allegiance to God’s plan, God’s program and God’s promises; that God has promised a destiny for Jerusalem, He has total confidence in that plan, in that destiny for Jerusalem and therefore he makes the vow; this is in a vow type format, verses 5-6. Then in verse 7, “Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom,” that’s the petition section. Now verses 8-9 can be considered part of the petition but in a very strange way they are found in the place where you would expect praise to be found. And in fact, verses 8-9 have the word for “blessed” which is a word for praise. So actually verses 8 -9 are praise. Now this should further offend people who do not understand Biblical justice and righteousness, that verses 8-9 when they are talking about the destruction is actually rejoicing with glee in the destruction that will come upon Babylon. That’s what these people are made out of. You might call it vengeance but we’ll see as we go through Psalm 137 this is not their vengeance, it is God’s vengeance. God is a vengeful God because God is a just God. People who claim Psalm 137 is out of line are people who are out of line because such people lack a standard of righteousness and justice.

Those are the main sections; for outline sake we can actually divide it in a three-fold way, verses 1-4, the psalmist recalls his Babylonian experience of frustration. The second section, verses 5-6 the psalmist asserts his loyal dedication to Jerusalem; and then verses 7-9 the psalmist petitions God for judgment upon the enemies of Jerusalem.

Now verse 1: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.” It says “by the rivers of Babylon, there,” and notice in verse 3, “For there they carried us away captive. Verse 4, “How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a strange land?” What is the word in verse 4, “strange land?” Verse 3, “there;” verse 1, “there.” The emphasis obviously in the first four verses is geographic location. So Psalm 137 begins with a problem of geography or the geographical location of the Jew. The Jew is in the Diaspora; he is a Jew that has been removed by force from his native land and he must now exist spiritually apart from the temple, apart from the Shekinah glory, apart from a functioning Levitical priesthood, apart from a king, apart from everything that he has held dear. Everything that means much to the Jew has been removed and he himself has been deported. So the Jew is now in the fifth degree of discipline according to Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. That’s what happens when a national entity goes negative toward the Word of God.

One of the areas of academic endeavor, people do not hold revelation as a standard but man’s autonomous reason as a standard, when in areas of politics other things are held other than the standards of God’s Word, then that nation goes down. And Israel went down at this point.

Now “the rivers of Babylon” were actually irrigation ditches, they are not literal; it’s the word for irrigation ditches in this context. The place was like a vast delta and they farmed, they had rich soil and much of Babylonian economics is tied in with the tremendous irrigation system they had for bringing the waters from the Tigris-Euphrates up into the farm areas. Actually it wasn’t very far up, several hundred feet at most, but nevertheless this is how they maintained themselves economically.

That lands us solidly into the theology of the exile and we are going to have to study some issues as to why he says in the last of verse 1, “we wept, when we remembered Zion.” Here’s a man who is in the shade, it’s a hot afternoon, and probably they’ve taken an afternoon break from work, they’ve gone over to the trees that grow by these canals and they’ve had a prayer meeting there under these trees where it’s cool. And as they’ve gotten together they think about Zion and they begin to weep about their country and what happened, and a prayer is going to be made and the prayer in the rest of the Psalm is made during that time, that afternoon in the heat by the canals.

Now the exile is a time in history when certain things are taught. One of the things you ought to do as a believer is to master the divine viewpoint framework. There are certain events in Scripture that are necessary to understand; events, not all events but there are key events in the Bible, narrated carefully in a certain order, referred to again and again throughout the pages of the text. This is why it is required to spend twice or three times as much time in the Old Testament as in the New Testament. The New Testament is fine except without the Old Testament you cannot understand it properly. These are the events: creation, the fall, the flood, the Noahic Covenant, the call of Abraham, Exodus, Mount Sinai, conquest, settlement, election and reign of King David, that’s as far as we’ve worked so far in the family training program. Associated with each one of these events are certain doctrines. Once you understand this it will enable you to think your way through Scripture and to pull out doctrine that you can use to face different kinds of situations in life. So, when for example, you deal with the problem of suffering and you have an area, maybe loved ones, maybe your home life, maybe national life, when we deal with the problem of suffering you ought to be trained to go back to the fall and relate it to the fall, know that the fall is found in Genesis 3-4, know what portions of that passage apply to your situation, and know the principles of suffering. This gives you immediately a framework that makes you have a superior platform in which to handle the problem of life.

We could go on and go through the entire Bible that way, but we’re going to go on to one particular event and that is the event of the exile; the exile from 586 BC to 516 BC, roughly. It depends on how you start and end it and various controversies but generally it’s a 70 year period of time and during this 70 year period we have various books written. We have, contrary to the liberals, Daniel written; it wasn’t written in the Maccabean period, it was written during the exile. Then we have the book of Esther, written about the Jews who stayed in the Exile. And we have probably 1 and 2 Kings compiled during that time, and a number of other things, some of the Psalms were written including Psalm 137. So many of the books of the Bible were written outside of the land of Israel. And because they were all of the books written outside of the land of Israel between the years of 586 BC and 516 BC emphasize certain kinds of doctrine. So if we as Christians will go back and look at the exile and visualize the situation and then connect with the exile the great doctrines that are emphasized, we will have a base on which to operate when we find ourselves in similar situations. So if you find yourself in a time which corresponds to the exile in the sense that you are geographically removed from the areas of blessing, if you find yourself, as we all do during the times of the Gentiles, operating in a highly human viewpoint environment, you are in essence operating in the same kind of thing as the Jews were during this period.

All right, if that’s your situation, and we live in a time which corresponds with the exile in many, many ways, then it also follows that we will need to know the docs that God emphasized during this period of time. And God emphasized four doctrines throughout this period, doctrines which were revealed earlier in Scripture, but doctrines which now are revealed in greater detail. One is the essence of God, the very basic doctrine of all doctrines, the doctrine of God. Every Christian ought to know all the attributes of God and be able to point to specific passages of Scripture where these attributes are found. The reason is because you cannot go any further than the character of God; every other doctrine depends on who and what God is, not who and what man is. So God’s character, God has certain attributes and two of these attributes came to be taught over and over and over to the people during the exile. One was the doctrine of sovereignty or His attribute of sovereignty and the other was the attribute of grace. So we have two attributes emphasized: His attribute of love or grace, and His attribute of sovereignty.

The attributes of God that are emphasized here, one, God’s sovereignty, is shown by the fact that after the exile begins, the Jews must sit on the bench and watch the game played by all other players. They have to trust that God will work the game out without their personal participation. In other words, as a nation Israel has been benched. And she must stand by the sidelines and watch God play the ball game using other players, men like Cyrus, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, these will be the great rulers of power in the world to come of these people. And when they look from the sidelines they are going to have to say yes, Jehovah worked in history apart from the nation Israel. Now they believed in sovereignty before, of course. But they hadn’t believed quite like this. Correspondingly, we as believers can look upon our lives and many times you’re going to face a situation where you’re out here some place and your problems are here and you will have no way of handling those problems directly; they’re out of your control, they’re beyond your control, and you are going to have to, at that point, trust God to work in those problems. It may be a loved one, it may be that loved one won’t pay any attention to you, maybe they’re in rebellion against you in a certain way; many parents face a grievous situation where their kids just take off and leave. And the parent at that point has to say all right, I will trust God for the welfare of my child; I am going to trust the Lord to work it out. In that situation you are just like the Jews are here. They have to trust God to work out the problem apart from their own personal participation.

The other attribute of God is His love and grace, and that’s one that’s going to come out in Psalm 137 oddly enough, because you wouldn’t think of Psalm 137 as a very gracious Psalm. Yet that’s the issue behind Psalm 137. The issue of His grace during the exile is simply this: if God is a God of justice, why is it that He doesn’t come to our relief, now! And the answer is that God does not come to our relief now because He is gracious; He is postponing total relief because total relief means judgment of all nations and the termination of history and in order for men to trust in Jesus Christ, in order that men might have time to consider the claims of the gospel, God is not going to invade history and terminate it. Therefore, because of His hands off attitude for a while, then believers are going to have to suffer for a while. In other words, believers suffer because God is gracious to the unbeliever. That’s the principle, and that’s the principle that illustrates God’s grace. God postpones helping believers in order to help unbelievers. That’s the doctrine of God with His two attributes.

The next great doctrine that is illustrated is the doctrine of sanctification. The doctrine of sanctification has many points but the part emphasized most during the exile is the role the enemies of God play in accomplishing our sanctification. During the time of the exile it was the Babylonian gods, the religion, the human viewpoint religion of Babylon, the Medo-Persian concept, the Greek concept, all these areas, cultures, concepts and men played their role in sanctifying the Jew. The Jew would have many problems at the time of the exile but one problem the Jew would never have again in history was the problem of idolatry. That problem had been almost permanently sanctified in the Jew’s soul through the horrible experiences of the exile. God put it to them through His enemies. Similarly God can put you as a believer in dire straits because of your attitude. God can take you to the woodshed and God can use demonic powers to discipline you as a believer, even though He loves you very much, He loves the final product more than the product He sees today. And because of that, He will forgo blessing you in time in order to bless you in eternity. He will permit suffering to come in; He will permit training to come in order to get you in shape for eternity.

The third great doctrine that is emphasized in the time of the exile is the doctrine of revelation, that simply means that God reveals Himself to us in history by words, a doctrine which at the heart denies, and all modern theology, including Time Magazine, and the doctrine of revelation has parts to it, like all the other doctrines. One of those parts is that revelation includes statements about the future; it is prophetic. So during the exile guess what part of the doctrine of revelation is shown? Prophecy. The rise of prophecy is a prominent part of the exilic experience of the Jew. They no longer can look forward to God’s immediate help and aid in the present so he looks forward to God’s help and aid in the future, so prophecy takes on a new role.

And then finally the fourth doctrine that’s emphasized in the exile is the doctrine of faith. We studied that in the fall with Abraham and we had various points on the doctrine of faith and one of those things is that faith is orientation to grace, that the creature must always remain finite, limited, and therefore attains his sustenance from his creator. And since the fall the Creator must be gracious to maintain the link with the creature. So orientation to grace means that on a moment by moment basis I am dependent for my sustenance, my happiness, for my purpose, for my meaning in life upon God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And every person in the human race who is in some state of rebellion or submission at the point of trusting God.

That’s the situation, that’s the overall doctrinal principle, so in Psalm 137 when it says “we wept, when we remembered Zion,” it means there’s an attraction, there’s an orientation to grace, there’s an attraction back to the place of blessing. They are separated from that place of blessing, but nevertheless, while they are in the exile they are occupied with that; it entertains their minds, over and over the Jewish men would gather and they would talk about the city, the city was a wreck. The book of Ezra and Nehemiah tell us the condition of the city, just bricks, a pile of bricks is all it is, and yet whether it’s a rebel, whether there are skeletons in the street, whatever it is, whatever the condition, the Jew is attracted to Jerusalem. Now this represents the fact that thousands of miles away, stripped completely of his home, his nation and everything else, he thinks back, mentally he’s not quite all there in Babylon. Now the mentality of kind of being separate from the place where you are was taught them by a man who was largely ignored in his own day, Jeremiah, so to get background let’s turn to Jeremiah 29.

It was in Jeremiah 29 that in one of Jeremiah’s classes he taught the people to prepare for national disaster. Of course people didn’t listen to the Word any better than they do now. So he wrote it down for them, knowing they wouldn’t bother with it then, but later on when the pressure hit and they had trouble, fortunately for Jeremiah they did not have a telephone, but Jeremiah did put in writing what they were to do when they faced this kind of a situation. So we will spend most of the time studying Jeremiah 29 to see why the Jew reacts the way he does in dispersion. By the way, he’s still reacting this way and I’ll read an article about that in a moment.

Jeremiah 29:1, “Now these are the words of the letter that Jeremiah, the prophet, sent from Jerusalem unto the residue of the elders who were carried captives, and to the priests, and to the prophets, and to all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon.” Jeremiah is going to minister to the nation, even in dispersion. You have the eastern end of the Mediterranean here, Jeremiah is located in Jerusalem, Babylon is over here. And even though they are separated by a thousand plus miles, Jeremiah is still a minister to the nation. The principle is that wherever the Jew goes geographically he still is rooted by authority to prophets in Jerusalem. Even today; the Scriptures were written in Israel. There is, you might say, an Israeli document that controls the heart and minds of believers all over the world.

So there’s a geographical root that cannot be uplifted, and this is one of the odd characteristics that show up for the Jew. And it’s always troubled the Jew, down through history; he’s always had a problem with appearing unpatriotic in the country that he goes to. The Jew is like he has two homes, over here in Babylon he is supposed to settle down; he is a captive, he’s going to be there for 70 years, and even though he’s going to live in Babylon for 70 years, he’s going to settle down, he’s going to go into business, and they did go into business, so much so in fact that by the time the Medes and the Persians took over the Jews had control of much of the currency of Babylon. They were thrifty, they were ingenious, they were very good managers of funds, and we even have clay tablets of a banking house that had many, many Jewish clients in it that was discovered in archeology. So the Jew has dual citizenship.

Now I have here an article that someone handed me by a Dr. Glasser who is professor of education and social structure at Harvard University, and he wrote this review of a book called Jews in American Politics by Stephen Isaacs. And he has many, many interesting things to say but his comment goes with the mentality of Jeremiah 29:1 where the Jew living in another geographical area has his real heart, his real mind, his real attention a thousand miles away, back in Israel. So this is what he writes about Jews even today:

“American Jews have daily to confront a dilemma. Active as many are in the defense of Israel, they wish they could point to other groups committed to other homelands so that they would not stand out so markedly. Unfortunately, they search the horizon for company in vain; the Irish do not seem terribly concerned about what is happening in Northern Ireland. The Greeks have only recently leapt in the political arena and it is not clear how long they will be there. Black interest in Africa is real but hardly comparable in any way to the Jewish interest in Israel. If the deep feeling that moves Jews for the state of Israel were normal in American politics found elsewhere in similar proportions it would be harder to change untoward political pressure.” I’m just reading excerpts out of this. “The is indeed something distinctive about the Jewish role in American politics; 3% of the population casting 4% of the vote, possessing 5% of American income, they nevertheless are responsible for a much larger share of the contributions that fuel political campaigns; the commentators to report on them; the analysts and the organizers who assist the candidate. And most distinctive of all, Jews, one of the most prosperous of religious and ethnic groups, consistently contradict what appear to be their economic interests by supporting liberal causes and voting for liberal candidates. Stephen Isaacs sets out to explain these phenomena, interviewing at length most of the people who might have something and be informed to say about them. In the end the explanations are somewhat unsatisfactory, as is perhaps the almost inevitable when one deals with the Jews.”

He goes on to describe the motives, why the Jew in America is the way he is; he has this kind of dual feeling. He says: “Indeed it is fear for Israel that leads American Jews to act fearlessly, and sometimes foolishly, in the United States. They expose themselves to attack for exercising undue influence on Congress, for raising too much money for Israel. In effect, Jews are using up whatever influence their wealth and skills give them to defend Israel. Jewish influence is expended so freely, not in defense of Jewish wealth or power, or interest in the United States but in defense of a gravely endangered nation to which Jews are inextricably tied by history, religion and people hood. The extravagant public mobilization of wealth and influence is made necessary by lack of power, lack of Jewish power in Israel, lack of Jewish power in the United States. And further it is fear for Israel, now coupled with South Africa and the United States, in the attacks of third world and socialist enemies that is slowly dissolving the Jewish commitment to liberalism and the left,” and he goes on to describe it. But the mentality was generated hundreds and hundreds of years ago when the Jews, when they were in Babylon, were thinking constantly, Zion, Zion, Zion, Zion, Zion, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem. What says Jeremiah? Jeremiah is over there, we don’t listen to the prophets here in Babylon, we listen to Jeremiah. So the mentality is always Israel-centered. That’s why Psalm 137 is going to be so highly geographical.

The Jew in the dispersion is always geographically upset. So in Jeremiah 29:2, it’s a historical notice of the situation that led to the letter, “(After that Jeconiah the king, and the queen, and the eunuchs, the princes of Judah and Jerusalem, and the carpenters, and the smiths, were departed from Jerusalem;)” you see in verse 2 all the upper class were deported. Now don’t get the impression that many Christians erroneously get that all Jews were deported in 586 BC. Not so; between 600 BC and 586 BC the upper class were taken out. Every society has an upper and lower class, and as Americans we find that kind of repugnant; we don’t like to admit it but it’s so nevertheless, always will be and always has been so, that every nation has an upper class and every nation has a lower class. And by class we don’t mean economic wealth; we mean character of soul. We have people who are superior people and we have people who are naturally clods. And every group is going to have superior people and every group is going to have clods. And that’s just the way it is and there’s no such thing as equality in that area. The area of character, there will be certain solid people who will always come to the aid of a community; they will always be the outstanding productive people in the community. And then there will always be the people that sit at home before the boob tube, and turn their brain on about five minutes a day to complain about what the leaders are doing. We even have that in the local church.

Jeremiah 29:3, “By the hand of Elasah the son of Shaphan” this is the courier that took the letter the thousand miles from Jerusalem to Babylon; one thousand miles this man acted as a courier to take doctrine to these people, “and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, (whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent unto Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon) saying,” now here begins the instructions, instructions that are going to set into the Jewish soul something that hundreds and hundreds of years of history are never going to erase. The Jew has never gotten over this…never gotten over it. And for his own sake we hope he never does because this is what is preserving the Jew. These are survival instructions and by application they apply to believers today. We live in the kingdom of man, and we need these instructions too because we don’t hold the reigns of power. The immediate reins of power are all held by human viewpoint authorities.

Jeremiah 29:4, “Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, unto all that are carried away captives, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem unto Babylon;” notice the phrase deliberately put in there, “I caused to be carried away.” God wants these people to start off with a certain mentality to His sovereignty. God is sovereign, God is righteous, God is just, God is love, God is omniscient, omnipotent, omniscient, immutable, and eternal. God is all these things plus many more; those are the basic attributes. Now there is one thing that has got to start at the heart of everything and their response to the pressures of life; they have got to be clear on the character of God and in particular that the situation is under control, God’s control, not Satan’s, not the Babylonians, not the Medes, not the Persians or anyone else, even Cyrus has been raised up by God. So the first element, the key element that underscores everything is the sovereignty of God, “I have caused you to be carried away from Jerusalem unto Babylon,” so if you have complaints about Babylon you complain to Me, I’m the one that caused it.

Jeremiah 29:5, “Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them,” so the first instruction they obtain has to do with the divine institution. After they master carefully that God is sovereign, God wants them to understand that there are certain divine institution’s that control life. And one of these is the institution of human responsibility and labor. It goes back to creation. God created man in His own image; since He created man in His own image that means that man is responsible, he is going to be evaluated on what he produces. So he says when you go into this land you are to gain private property, buy it up. Remember, this applies to believers, it’s a very clear application, because most people say well yes, but the believer citizenship is in heaven, we shouldn’t own things in this world, this other platonic worldliness that gets started in evangelical circles. Yes but the same argument could be applied here, couldn’t it? Couldn’t these Jews just as easily have said oh, but our citizenship is in Israel a thousand miles to the west, what are we buying land here for. Yet God tells them you go ahead, you build your houses and you dwell in them, gain private property, it’s the basis of freedom.

The first divine institution is freedom, and the first divine institution depends upon private property. It means that wherever you have private property confiscated under the guise of inheritance taxes or socialism and welfare schemes like this, wherever you have confiscation of private property you have the destruction of human freedom; it is anti-God. You build your houses and you dwell in them; in other words, the houses represent private property, dwelling means you enjoy your private property. Don’t have this pious attitude, well the Lord owns this. The Lord owns the world. That is your private property and you are going to be held responsible; “Build your houses and dwell in them, plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them.” Again, produce and enjoy it; you live off your produce and don’t you apologize either. The Christian is to earn his money and he’s to invest his money; he is to gain private property and never to apologize for it. This comes about because we have members of the clergy who have never understood the areas of doctrine in economics.

To show you that this is not just Old Testament, turn to 2 Thessalonians 3:10. They had the same problem with the first divine institution. In Thessalonica men were going around saying Christ is coming tomorrow. And the result was the believers were saying oh, Christ is coming tomorrow, good, I can quit, I can retire, I can forget my business because Christ is coming tomorrow. In other words, it’s an excuse to let my laziness hang out all over the place. But notice, Paul said, and he goes back to his situation with the people and he says “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you,” in other words, this was a congregational instruction to believers in the city of Thessalonica, “that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” That’s the first divine institution; it’s upheld in the New Testament and the Old Testament. That’s the principle of Scripture, if you don’t work you don’t eat, it’s that simple. The Scripture is against parasites and the country today is loaded with parasites, people that don’t want to work and yet they want to eat. That’s the Scriptural viewpoint, not the human point of view but God’s point of view. And God wanted in Jeremiah 29:5, he wanted the people to continue to up gird this first divine institution during the time of the exile. So we’ll put a plus sign after the first divine institution. Even though they are geographically removed their minds are going to be on Zion all the time, every time the men gathered together by those canals they are going to try to talk about Zion, and talk about Israel, and talk about the times of the past. Nevertheless God says don’t you get so past-centered or so future-centered that these things don’t count.

Now we come to the next verse and this will be an answer to someone else’s question they handed in. Jeremiah 29:6, “Take ye wives,” and someone handed in a feedback card and the question was that if Daniel is futurist oriented, and you say that that’s the sign of spirituality in the Scripture, then are such things as marriage against this thrust of the Bible. Not at all; marriage is the means; future-oriented doesn’t mean you ignore the present. Future-oriented simply means your final goal is in the future. That’s what future orientation is, it doesn’t mean you forget the present, it just means you control the present by what you see in the future. So future-orientation has goals in mind, not means. Now when you come to verse 6 it goes to the second divine institution. Go ahead and marry, he says, that’s legitimate, go ahead and engage in the second divine institution; don’t use future centeredness and the idea that your citizenship really isn’t here to forgo these things. You’re a creature, you’re made in my image God says, I constructed the creation with these institutions in it and you have to function in these institutions so go ahead and do this.

“Take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters;” that’s the third divine institution, the institution of family, and that is supposed to operate, even in the exile, even when the Jew isn’t in his own land. “…beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not diminished.” So verse 6 has to do with the increase of population. Now the Jewish people have always increased in population. They’ve been a productive type of people and you have vigorous populations that do this and they can increase their population without getting into the hunger problem. Today everything you read about is about the hunger problem. Don’t forget, while we have technological difficulties, fertilizer and food raising and so on, nevertheless, one of the great causes of world hunger today has nothing to do with our limitation. One of the great causes for hunger today is simply anti-Biblical stupid ways of management. The American farmer is one of the most productive people and it’s not because the American farmer is more favored than farmers elsewhere in the world; it’s simply that the American farmer has his smarts together; he knows how to manage things. And therefore he out produces his competitors. Yet other countries are headed for disaster and we will probably ship tons and tons of grain to them. Communism always ruins food destruction; socialism always destroys food production.

How can a command like verse 6 be carried out today? Go ahead and bear many children and increase your population God says; don’t worry about the hunger problem, the hunger problem is because of stupid people. If you’re smart and you apply doctrine you won’t starve. You’ll develop means of subduing the earth, you won’t be a whining crybaby running around, oh what are we going to do with the hunger problem. God said subdue the earth; He said use it wisely. We throw more food in our garbage than most people in the rest of the world eat. They would have plenty of food if they’d just get with it in a few areas. So verse 6 teaches plus on the third divine institution.

Now we come to Jeremiah 29:7, one of the most amazing verses that the Jew had ever seen. They probably when they got to this letter couldn’t believe that Jeremiah wrote it; after all the prophesying about how bad Babylon was, and in Psalm 137 we’re going to see more about how bad Babylon was, yet God said in verse 7, “And seek the Shalom [peace] of the city” the peace or the welfare of the city, “whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.” All right, “seek the peace of the city where I have caused you” means to participate in the government of that country. So this is a mandate for the Jew to participate in the government as a faithful citizen; they probably didn’t vote then but they had other ways they could serve, serve in the armed forces, serve in the community, take an active roll in the community, even though I know God, says, your heart is in Zion thousands of miles away. That is no excuse for you not to take an active roll in the community. I wonder how many Christians voted last week; see, use the application of the principle, whether believers are going to actively participate or not. So the fourth divine institution is plus.

And then it says “pray unto the LORD for it,” it is God’s will for Gentile nations to prosper and be well run and it gives the reason in this verse, and here is one of the reasons that still applies to your activities as a believer priest on behalf of your nation, “for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.” The Hebrew word is the word shalom, it is larger than our word peace, it means welfare. This is something, good welfare, prosperity, and they are to pray for it because if they don’t, the implication of verse 7 is, you are not going to be blessed. See it’s in principle in reverse of a thing we learned with the doctrine of suffering. Remember what the third reason for suffering was? Association with the divine institutions. That principle now works two ways; it’s a two-edged sword. If we have a believer and an unbeliever in a divine institution, say the marriage, according to 1 Corinthians 7 the children of the unbelieving partner are sanctified by the believer.

In other words, God blesses the institution because of the believer in the institution. But when the blessing comes down it isn’t just to the believer, it is to the whole institution in which the believer is functioning. So it’s a very interesting principle of history. God blesses men individually, yes. But He also blesses men by means of institutions, and since God has retracted Israel from the scene of active engagement and made it passive, God is saying that the only way the Jew now can be blessed or receive his shalom is by participating in the fourth divine institution. So here you have a country, instead of a home we’ll just make it a country, a national home, and you have Jews over here. Here are the remnant of Jews; here are Gentiles, thousands and thousands of Gentiles in that nation. Now God says if you Jews will apply the Word in your home, be productive on your jobs, raise your children as unto Me, if you will participate in the community in various ways, helping that community, then I will bless you by blessing the entire institution. And when that entire institution is blessed, you’ll receive your blessing. But I won’t bless you apart from the fourth divine institution. Now that’s the mentality of Scripture, and this is why Paul gave that instruction in 1 Timothy 2.

In 1 Timothy 2:1-4 Paul is simply saying the same thing; “I exhort, therefore, that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men. [2] For kings, and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. [3] For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God, our Savior. [4] Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.” Now notice something; verse 2 has to do with our prayers for men who in themselves may not be believers. But under the principle of the divine institution they are the head of the fourth divine institution; praying for these men, President, Senators, Congressmen, mayors, city managers, men in the courtroom, policemen, military people, when you pray for these people you are actually praying for the shalom of the whole institution, for all of its pieces, for all of its parts.

The reason is, verse 2, the purpose clause, “in order that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life,” notice “we,” the “we” refers to believers, not the unbelievers. So the purpose of the praying isn’t to bless these people out here, actually it’s selfish, you pray for the kings and for the people in authority in order that, like in Jeremiah, in the shalom of your nation you have your shalom; in the peace of the country where you live, that’s your peace, that’s your prosperity. It’s the same thing. And verse 4 tells us another reason; because where we have believers prospered we have maximum evangelism. That’s the point of verse 4, “who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” God wants every man confronted with the claims of Christ, but he can’t if the believers are constantly stunted and suppressed in the national entity. So therefore believers are to carry on this prayer ministry.

Back to Jeremiah 29:4 his first direction was that this is a Romans 8:28 situation, I, God says, have caused it come about and I will handle the whole situation. All things will work out together for good. Verse 5 is the first divine institution; verse 6 the second and third; verse 7 is the fourth. Now Jeremiah 29:8-9, “For thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Let not your prophets and your diviners, that be in the midst of you, deceive you, neither hearken to your dreams which ye cause to be dreamed. [9] For they prophesy falsely unto you in my name: I have not sent them, saith the LORD.” Now God is warning believers against something and it’s always the tendency, and we have the same tendency today.

Here the Jews are, over in Babylon, here’s Jerusalem over here. Now eventually these people are going to get homesick; all this stuff in Jeremiah 29 sounds great but after all, you’re going to wind up doing a Psalm 137 every once in a while, so when you’re faced with that kind of a situation, he says, you be careful, because when you get down and homesick, and you’re despairing and the situation is going bad and you’re discouraged, there are going to come people telling you a quick solution and these prophets and these diviners that he is talking about in verses 8-9 were people who were prophesying that the captivity could be ended if they revolt against Babylon; if they would take matters into their own hands, and have a radical revolution, then there would be a solution. And God says huh-un, I caused the captivity, I will end it and I don’t need your help.

Now don’t you ever listen to these kinds of people, the short-cut boys that always want to produce something by a short-cut gimmick. This is the trouble with many people in the charismatic movement; God has a plan for your life, that plan began in eternity past, it became clear to you when you trusted in Christ, it will go on until the time you die and you’re going to have your ups and your downs all during this life but don’t ever let somebody sell you on the fact that all you have to do is have this one-shot experience and that’s going to solve all your problems. That is just like this, “I have not sent them, saith the LORD.” I have ordained a time period in your life and there is going to be a long drawn out process, now you let Me handle the problem. That’s the mentality of Jeremiah 29.

Let’s in conclusion turn back to Psalm 137 and point out something. These Jews, these believers in the exile, are going to have a new experience. In verse 1 they are beginning to learn something and it’s a principle they are going to have to learn all during the 70 years. It has something to do with verse 4, and it’s the agony of how shall we ever sing the Lord’s song in a strange land; this isn’t our place for worship. There’s something lacking, we are homeless. Now verse 4 besides being the answer to why we have lost Jewish music, because this was where we did lose Jewish music historically, the great hymns of Zion were never sung in the captivity, and what we call Jewish music is something the Jews have done since, but this is the cutoff, they just never sang. We’ve lost a whole fantastic tradition, rich, rich tradition has been lost in history because the Jew went into exile and he said I will not sing my song. Jehovah’s presence is not here, why rejoice any more, this isn’t the place we rejoice, we’re not built to live here. We’re built to live over there, not here.

For us the same situation exists, and as God told them to hold on, to run the race that is set before them with patience, so He is developing that elusive quality that we as Americans need a double portion of called patience. Hope and patience was something the Jew had to learn. And he has learned it well. Down through history he has been a living testimony to all men of hope and patience. Where did the Jew learn patience? He learned it by this experience of the exile. Now when we look at the Scripture as Christians our problem is the same one. There are some people here that are tremendously impatient. You’re so impatient with what the Lord wants to do in your life that you want everything yesterday. You want Him to reveal every single plan that He has so you can look at the hand and give your approval. Now if I could just know what God is for my life, all the details. Well, God doesn’t work that way, and you are going to be an unhappy frustrated irritable believer until you understand the concept of patience with God’s plan. God will reveal His plan to you in pieces, and that trial that you are going through, that pressure, think back to Jeremiah 29, I gave that pressure in your life; all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are called according to His purpose.