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July 7 Daily Reading- Read the Bible in 1 Year
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Today's reading will cover Jeremiah Chapters 41, 42:1-17, 43, and 44:1-7, 15-30. Today we will read about Ishmael of Ammon killing Gedaliah and the Jewish people with him as well as the Babylonian people who were there with Gedaliah. We will read about Johanan and the other people with him desiring to flee to Egypt but first asking Jeremiah what God would tell them to do. After receiving a message of compassion from God assuring them that He was with them and would protect them, that they did not need to be afraid, the people refused to obey and went to Egypt out of fear. We will also read about a message that God instructed Jeremiah to give the Jewish people living in Egypt who were worshipping the false queen of heaven. In our discussion for daily application we will talk about worship of a false god, the queen of heaven, in today's society. We will also talk about God's great compassion and love for us and how we do not need to be afraid. Over and and over in the Bible we read the phrase, "Do not be afraid." God wants us to trust in Him and obey Him. By doing so we do not need to be afraid! He is always with us, loves us, takes care of us, and knows what we need before we even ask Him. As Jesus taught us, we need to seek God's kingdom first and everything else will be taken care of.
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Transcript
Introduction and Preparation
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome back. Today is July 7th. You're here with Robin. I'm with In the Family Way Coaching, and we are here for our daily Bible reading. Thank you for joining me as we go through the dayby Day by Day Kids Bible, written by Karen Henley.
00:00:21
Speaker
If you are following along on your commitment calendar, go ahead and get that out and your sticker, or however you're ready to mark that off, because you're about to hear the Bible today.
00:00:33
Speaker
I am so glad that you are joining me, whether you are following along on the podcast or whether you are watching the video somewhere. Thank you for being here with me as we go through the Bible this year.
Gedaliah's Appointment and Assassination Plot
00:00:45
Speaker
We are going to be picking up in the book of Jeremiah today. And we left on a little bit of a cliffhanger yesterday when we were seeing that Gedalia has been placed in charge of the region of Judah by the king of Babylon, King Nebuchadnezzar.
00:01:01
Speaker
And he is being encouraged to allow ah somebody named Johanan, who is one of the leaders, to kill to let him kill Ishmael.
00:01:13
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who is part of the ah country of Ammon, A-M-M-O-N. He's an Ammonite. And this is a surrounding nation around Israel or Judah.
00:01:26
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And we saw yesterday that Johanan was cautioning Gedalia that he needed to kill Ishmael because Ishmael was planning to kill Gedalia. And when we left off yesterday, Gedalia said, no, don't kill Ishmael.
00:01:41
Speaker
He would never kill me. And today we're going to be picking up that story in chapter 41 of Jeremiah, and we will be reading through 42, 43, and 44 today.
God's Sovereignty and Expectations
00:01:55
Speaker
We're also going to be seeing how we've been speaking about that God is the God of all people. So he is God of the people, especially of his chosen people, wherever they may be living, whether they are living in Judah, whether they are living in Babylon, whether they are living in a surrounding country such as Egypt, God is still their God.
00:02:23
Speaker
And he is still wanting his people to obey him and to worship only him rather than continuing on with idol worship as they had been doing in Judah and Israel.
00:02:37
Speaker
So we're going to be seeing some of that today as well.
Ishmael's Betrayal and Johanan's Pursuit
00:02:41
Speaker
So picking up in chapter 41, we have, Now Ishmael was from Ammon. He had been one of his king's leaders. He took ten men and went to see Gedalia.
00:02:54
Speaker
They ate together. While they were eating, Ishmael killed Gedalia. Then Ishmael and his men killed all the Jewish people there.
00:03:05
Speaker
They killed the men from Babylon who were there too. The next day, 80 men came to town and they came to offer gifts to God. They didn't know what had happened to Gedalia.
00:03:18
Speaker
Ishmael went out to meet the men and he was crying as he went. He told them, come and see Gedalia.
00:03:28
Speaker
So the men went into the city and then Ishmael and his men killed them and threw their bodies into a well. But 10 of the men said, don't kill us.
00:03:40
Speaker
We can give you wheat and barley. We have oil and honey. We hid it in a field. So Ishmael didn't kill them.
00:03:51
Speaker
Ishmael took the rest of the people from town and he left with them to go to the land of Ammon.
00:03:59
Speaker
Jonohan and the other leaders heard what Ishmael had done. They got their men together and went to fight Ishmael. and they found him near a big pool. The people that Ishmael had taken saw Johanan, and they were glad.
00:04:15
Speaker
They ran over to him. But Ishmael and eight of his men got away, and they ran back to the land of Iman.
00:04:23
Speaker
Then Johanan took God's people and headed for Egypt. They wanted to get away from Babylon. Babylon's king had chosen Gedalia and put him in charge.
00:04:35
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And now Ishmael had killed Gedaliah. So the people were were scared of what Babylon's king might do.
00:04:45
Speaker
Chapter 41, Rocks in a Hole.
Jeremiah's Warning and God's Message
00:04:50
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Jehannan and the people stopped near Bethlehem and they went to go see Jeremiah. Please listen to us, they said. Pray to God for all of us. There were many of us and now there are only a few of us.
00:05:04
Speaker
Ask God to tell us where to go. Ask him to tell us what to do. I hear you, said Jeremiah. I will pray to God, and I will tell you everything God says.
00:05:19
Speaker
We promise to do whatever God tells us, they said. It may sound good to us, or it may sound bad, but we will obey God.
00:05:31
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10 days later, God spoke to Jeremiah. So Jeremiah called all the people together. God gave Jeremiah this message for the people. Stay in this land.
00:05:45
Speaker
Then i will build you up. I will not tear you down. i am sad about the trouble I sent you. Don't be afraid of Babylon's king.
00:05:56
Speaker
I am with you. i will save you from him. He will give your land back to you.
00:06:05
Speaker
What if you say that you won't stay in this land? That would not be obeying God, said Jeremiah. What if you say that you will go live in Egypt?
00:06:18
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Jeremiah told the people what God said he would do to them.
Defiance and Consequences in Egypt
00:06:22
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If you go to Egypt, war will come to Egypt. Food won't grow there.
00:06:29
Speaker
You will die there. Anyone who goes there to live will die. No one will get away.
00:06:37
Speaker
Johanan and the other leaders were proud, and they said, You're telling lies. God didn't say we shouldn't go to Egypt. You're just trying to give us to Babylon. You'll let them kill us, and you might take us away to their land.
00:06:52
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So Johanan and the people did not obey God. They went to Egypt. And they made Jeremiah and Baruch, who, remember, was Jeremiah's helper, his his scribe, go with them.
00:07:08
Speaker
In Egypt, God spoke to Jeremiah. Get some big rocks, said God. Dig into the clay in the road by the king's palace. Put the rocks in the hole and then cover them up.
00:07:21
Speaker
Be sure my people are watching. Then tell them this. I, the God of Israel, will send for the king of Babylon. I will put his throne right over these rocks.
00:07:35
Speaker
His tents will be right here. He will fight Egypt. He will kill some people and he will take some to Babylon. He will burn down the idols' worship houses.
00:07:48
Speaker
Then he will go home, not hurt at all.
00:07:54
Speaker
Chapter 44 The Wives and Their Idols There were Jews living in other parts of Egypt, and God spoke to Jeremiah about them. "'You saw the trouble I gave the towns of Judah,' said God. "'The people made me angry by worshipping idols.
00:08:16
Speaker
I told the people, "'Do not worship idols.' But they did not listen, and that is why the towns are piles of sticks and stones. Now why bring this same trouble to yourselves?
00:08:30
Speaker
asked God. Why make me angry? Now the men knew that their wives worshipped idols, and some of the women were even there to hear Jeremiah.
00:08:42
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It was a big group. But the people said, we won't listen to this. We will worship the queen of heaven like we did in Judah. We had plenty of food then.
00:08:54
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We had no trouble. But we stopped worshiping the queen of heaven and then we had trouble. People died in fights. People died of hunger.
00:09:06
Speaker
and the women said, we worshiped the queen of heaven and our husbands knew about it. They didn't try to stop us.
00:09:15
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Then Jeremiah said, didn't God know you were doing this? And at last he couldn't stand it anymore. That's why your land is a desert now. It's all because you turned against God.
00:09:26
Speaker
You did not obey him. You did not obey his laws and that's why trouble came. So go ahead, worship idols. But God promises this, no Jewish people in Egypt will call on his name again.
00:09:43
Speaker
God is going to bring them trouble. Not good. Then you will know if God's word or theirs will come true.
00:09:53
Speaker
Here is the sign that what I say is true, says God. I gave your king, Zedekiah, to Babylon. Now I am going to give the king of Egypt to his enemies.
00:10:08
Speaker
And that's the end of our reading today.
Reflection on Faith and Obedience
00:10:16
Speaker
What do you think about that? Wasn't that incredible? The people asked to know what God wanted them to do, and they swore that they were going to do it, and then they didn't do it.
00:10:31
Speaker
And not only that, but they forced Jeremiah and his scribe Baruch to go with them into Egypt.
00:10:39
Speaker
Now I want to read some of the big Bible on that because it has more detail and i think it's important.
00:10:50
Speaker
When God sent the message to Jeremiah, he said in chapter 42, verses 10, If you will stay in this land, then will I build you up and not tear you down, and I will plant you and not uproot you.
00:11:07
Speaker
for I will relent concerning the calamity that I have done to you. Our version says that I feel sorry for it, but I don't think that that's a very accurate translation. It says that God will relent, meaning that he will give them mercy.
00:11:24
Speaker
He says, do not be afraid of the king of Babylon, whom you dread. Do not be afraid of him. The people were afraid as we read in our story today.
00:11:37
Speaker
It says that because Ishmael had killed the men from Babylon as well as Gedalia, that it says, so the people were scared of what Babylon's king might do.
00:11:52
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So they were trying to run to Egypt in order to be away from Babylon, but it was because they were scared of the king of Babylon. And so God addresses their fear. He tells them in verse 11, do not be afraid of the king of Babylon, whom you dread.
00:12:09
Speaker
Do not be afraid of him. It is a declaration of the Lord. For I am with you to save you and deliver you from his hand.
00:12:20
Speaker
I will also show you compassion and he will have compassion on you and restore you to your own soil. But if you say we will not stay in this land so that you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, saying no, instead we will go into the land of Egypt where we will see no war or hear the sound of the shofar or hunger for food and live there.
00:12:44
Speaker
Now therefore hear the word of the Lord, O remnant of Judah. Thus says the Lord God of hosts of Israel. If you really set your faces to enter Egypt and go to travel there, then it will come to pass that the sword, which you fear will overtake you there in the land of Egypt, and the famine about which you are anxious will follow hard after you there in Egypt, and there you will die.
00:13:12
Speaker
So will it be for all the people who set their faces to enter Egypt to travel there. They will die by the sword, by famine, and by plague. So none of them will remain or escape from the calamity that I will bring on them.
00:13:30
Speaker
He says further down in verse 19,
00:13:35
Speaker
Do not go to Egypt. Know for sure that I have forewarned you this day, for you have led your own souls in anin't error, since it was you who sent me to the Lord your God, saying, Pray to Adonai our God on our behalf, and declare to us, and we will do it.
00:13:53
Speaker
So I have this day declared it to you, but you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God in anything for which he has sent me to you. More than once we've heard God tell that we need to be afraid.
00:14:04
Speaker
by famine and by plague and the place where you desire to go to travel there
00:14:11
Speaker
once we've heard god tell us that we need to not be afraid And that if we go our own way, and if the people went their own way, then the things that they were trying to escape from, that they were so scared of, that they would be doubtt they would still be dealing with it because God would chase them there with it.
00:14:33
Speaker
Even for Jeremiah, in chapter 1, when God called Jeremiah, he told Jeremiah, Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.
00:14:48
Speaker
He says, do not be afraid of them for I am with you. And then God stretched out his hand and touched my mouth and said, I have put my words into your mouth.
00:15:00
Speaker
And he goes on and he says,
00:15:06
Speaker
maybe that was Ezekiel that he said that too.
00:15:16
Speaker
No, it is Jeremiah. I just needed to go a little further down. He says, God is telling Jeremiah. He says in verse 17 of chapter one, now you gird up your loins, get up and tell them everything that I ordered you.
00:15:32
Speaker
Do not be terrified by them or else I will terrify you before them.
00:15:41
Speaker
So God tells us that, ah has told us, told the different people, he says, you you think that you're scared now about what's going to happen. It will be even worse if you do not obey me.
00:15:53
Speaker
So God is once again warning them and he's given them every opportunity. that it's going to be bad for them. They need to trust in him. Can you believe it that they didn't want to trust in God?
00:16:05
Speaker
God was offering them a blessing straight from Jeremiah's mouth. And yet they did not believe God. They did not have faith.
00:16:16
Speaker
They were disobedient. So it's not while not directly a part of our relationship, Daily application. We can definitely take that as as part of our daily application to have faith in God because he, as we've spoken about a lot recently, God is faithful and he will, he knows the plans that he has for us.
00:16:40
Speaker
And we need to obey those plans when he tells us what to do because we don't need to be afraid. It will go worse for us if we do not obey God. One of the things that i really try to live by is that I want to be happy in life.
00:16:55
Speaker
And I know that I will be the happiest that I can be if I am doing the things that God has set ah out for me to do because I know that he has given me purpose and he has planned good works for me to do.
00:17:09
Speaker
and so I take such great joy, as I've mentioned in doing this, and i I want things to go well in general, and not that it's a guarantee that I won't have any difficulties because I definitely do have things that God works things out in me.
00:17:24
Speaker
but i have so much joy as opposed to walking away from him and just trying to go my own way and it is it would be so much better for them if they would simply obey god god had promised to take care of them and to relent if only they would stay in the land and they did not listen Now let's go and talk about this queen of heaven that the Israelites in Egypt are worshiping and how they worshiped her in Judah as well.
Modern Idolatry Concerns
00:17:59
Speaker
And that their husbands knew about it and they said, well, they didn't try to stop us then. Can you believe that? This is so terrible. They believe that by not worshiping her is why all of the things came about.
00:18:14
Speaker
But what I wanted to bring up was that, ah so I looked up who this queen of heaven is referencing and who it is referencing in Jeremiah is the, she was considered a fertility goddess.
00:18:29
Speaker
And she was also those supposed to be the wife of Baal or also known as Malak. So this is part of the worship of Baal, but they were worshiping who they called the queen of heaven, who would have been Baal's wife.
00:18:44
Speaker
Now, what's interesting is that while you would think that this is only something that goes on in the book of Jeremiah and in Old Testament times, this is actually still going on today. And I would not have known that.
00:18:56
Speaker
I know that there is also reference in the Catholic church to worshiping the queen of heaven, which I did not know about until looking up today. And because when I tried to do a search for it, it came up with a queen of heaven parish a Catholic church out of New York.
00:19:15
Speaker
And so as I was researching who, which goddess was the queen of heaven, because i they didn't they don't give her name in the book of Jeremiah, they just give that title. And it came up with a reference to both being the wife of Baal, as well as the worship of Mary.
00:19:36
Speaker
and in the Catholic Church. And that and even in the book of Luke, Mary was quoted as saying you know that she revered ah her savior, which would have been Jesus, her son.
00:19:51
Speaker
She was not herself to be revered. And when what a woman came up to Jesus and said, blessed is the mother who bore you and nursed you, said,
00:20:02
Speaker
did not agree with that i don't remember exactly what he said i read it but i don't recall at this exact moment and so we are not to worship any queen of heaven because there is no queen of heaven but what i was also going to say is that people are still today worshiping whom they believe that there is a queen of heaven And I was at work and I was working with a woman ah who had no longer works at my particular location.
00:20:32
Speaker
And this was last year, I believe sometime. And ah she proclaimed to be a Christian woman. And then she asked me if I would be interested in and in what I'd like to attend with her.
00:20:46
Speaker
And what I thought about ah the fact that there was a queen of heaven. And I said, ah no, there's no queen of heaven. There is the Trinity, the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit.
00:20:59
Speaker
But there is no queen of heaven. And she said, well, there needs to be a queen because and she gave me some reason that I don't remember now and that God ah was a woman or that there was a woman God with God.
00:21:14
Speaker
And I said, no, that was not biblical. And she needed to be away from that because it was not the right thing. And she said that a friend of hers or so somebody she knew had introduced her to this and that she was now attending some kind of a church here in San Diego where they were worshiping the Queen of Heaven.
00:21:34
Speaker
And so I tried to do a search for that, but I was unable to locate it ah to give you more information. But I just wanted to let you know this type of idolatry does indeed still exist in today's time.
00:21:49
Speaker
And it is just as horrible today as it was then. and so we need to be cautious about things like that, to not be involved in that and to not be led astray by things like that, because they will profess to be Christian and then claim that they are also worshiping in addition to God, the Queen of Heaven.
00:22:11
Speaker
And in my research today, i found that it was considered ah part of how they were blending ah the pagan religion with Judaism even claiming God had a wife and that she was the God of heaven. So some people were using her as the wife of Moloch.
00:22:30
Speaker
Some were using her as the wife of Yahweh. And either way, that was completely inaccurate and not biblical. God at no point in time references a queen of heaven.
00:22:42
Speaker
that we are to be worshiping. He says, I am the one true God. There is no other but me. So that's a big part of our daily lesson today is our daily application is that to be mindful of this idolatry that does still
Conclusion: Trust and Positivity
00:22:57
Speaker
exist.
00:22:57
Speaker
We are aware of things like Buddhism. We are aware of things like Hinduism, ah but we also need to be aware of people still actually doing worship for the queen of heaven, whether it's in the form of worshiping Mary,
00:23:10
Speaker
or whether it's in the form of worshiping and somebody that they have decided is the wife of god
00:23:20
Speaker
oh boy that's a lot isn't it but our takeaway for today is mostly to not be afraid we spoke a little bit about that well we spoke a lot about that here earlier where the people were afraid And we need to not be afraid. God tells us not to be afraid, to seek his kingdom first.
00:23:41
Speaker
So it's it's not necessarily that that things will go, that that are headed that we are headed for bad things, and therefore we need to um be wary of that.
00:23:52
Speaker
But that we are needing to remember that God frequently tells us not to be afraid, to trust in him. Yesterday we saw how the Ethiopian man, or the man from Cush, spoke up on behalf of Jeremiah, and God said that he would save this man because he had put his trust in God.
00:24:16
Speaker
We also need to continue to put our trust in God and to not be afraid. We've spoken so many times about Jesus telling us that We don't need to worry about anything because no man will add a day of day to his life by worrying about things.
00:24:34
Speaker
We need only to put our faith and our trust in God, seek his kingdom first, and everything else that we need, God will take care of because he knows what we need before we even ask him.
00:24:47
Speaker
Our God loves us. you just say He knows the plans that he has for us, plans to prosper us, plans for a hope and the future. And we need to see over and over again that the people, when we come to him, just as when they came to him, they didn't have to go to him. They could have just left to go to Egypt, but they took the time to go to God.
00:25:10
Speaker
And although they went to God, they did not trust in him. We need to be sure that if we are going to God, that we trust in him with what he tells us.
00:25:23
Speaker
And that we we believe that he is faithful because he has so much good reputation And that was what we spoke about yesterday was that we have hope because of the things that we remember. God is love.
00:25:36
Speaker
God has so much great love for us. So we here we are seeing again today that we can trust in God, that he is faithful. He shows compassion and mercy for us every day.
00:25:51
Speaker
So I hope that you feel that God has lit your light today with today's reading. And I ask that you would please click that light button that looks like a heart or a thumbs up, but it's really a light button.
00:26:03
Speaker
And share this event or this ah today's reading so that we can help spread the word about reading God's word so that other people too can be encouraged to not be fearful and instead go to God and trust in him as he is faithful.
00:26:20
Speaker
and loves us so much. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day today, and I will be here for everyone again tomorrow.