Stage Four

 Jeremiah 34:1-7

When we hear the words “stage four” our minds go to it's an all out attack on the cancer cells, they have control of the body and time is short for the one we love.  But God, how I’ve learned to love those words, for I have four friends that have been given that message over the last years, and were told to get their affairs in order.  As I stated, over the last years my friend Alejandro was told his time was very short, weeks maybe a month, but God is the one who set the date, and one year has passed, and all the markers are looking good. 

Most of us do not have a Jeremiah who is God’s envoy saying, this word came to me from the LORD, so listen up.   We have been programmed to believe what a doctor tells us as if it were God speaking.  And God has spoken, and Jeremiah is instructed to go and share what God has said to King Zedekiah.  Now it may be of interest that the nations of the world were all fighting against Jerusalem and all its surrounding cities.  They all are under the control of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and all the armies of the world at that time are coming on one common foe, Judah.

The message to King Zedekiah, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Go and speak to Zedekiah king of Judah and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord: Behold, I am giving this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire. You shall not escape from his hand but shall surely be captured and delivered into his hand. You shall see the king of Babylon eye to eye and speak with him face to face. And you shall go to Babylon.’ Yet hear the word of the Lord, O Zedekiah king of Judah! Thus says the Lord concerning you: ‘You shall not die by the sword. You shall die in peace. And as spices were burned for your fathers, the former kings who were before you, so people shall burn spices for you and lament for you, saying, “Alas, lord!”’ For I have spoken the word, declares the Lord.”  (Jeremiah 34:2-5)

And we know that Zedekiah did see the King of Babylon eye to eye and that he was forced to witness his sons being executed and then his eyes were put out.  We have this account in Jeremiah 39:5-7 and also in chapter 52:8-11.  It would be years later that King Zedekiah would die a natural death and have a royal funeral as found in 2 Chronicle 16:14.

We are servants of a promise keeper, and yet we His people have learned so little, many read the Bible, but its value is not in reading but in abiding and applying what is written.  In 1 Corinthians 10:11, “Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.”

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice