Story 1: The Grief of the Prophets
The prophet Jeremiah was called the weeping prophet. He wept because he loved God, yet he watched as the nation of Israel rebelled against Him. Jeremiah knew that their hearts were hard, ugly, and full of sin. They rejected Yahweh and the amazing privilege it was to be His holy, chosen people. For hundreds of years they had not turned to Him in trust. God had warned them again and again through His holy prophets, and still they had not turned in repentance to their God.
Over a hundred years before Jeremiah came to prophecy, God sent the prophet Isaiah to the king of Judah. Judah was the Southern Kingdom of Israel, and Hezekiah was their ruler. Isaiah warned King Hezekiah that one day God would bring the nation of Babylon to conquer Israel as judgment for their sin.
In that story, royal officials from Babylon had come to visit King Hezekiah in Jerusalem. Hezekiah did something very foolish. He wanted to show off to the Babylonian officials. He wanted them to know what a great king he was. So he took them into God’s Holy Temple and showed them all the beautiful instruments of gold and silver that were used to serve the Lord. He took them into the storehouses and showed off all of his weapons of war. He later declared that there was nothing of worth in Jerusalem that he did not show the Babylonians. But Hezekiah was the king of God’s priestly nation. Instead of bragging about his wealth, he should have been bedazzling the foreigners about the goodness of the Most High God. Hezekiah used the holy treasures that were meant to aid in the worship of God to brag about his own riches and skill! He also wanted to make a false friendship with a powerful nation instead of trusting in the true God for his protection.
God saw these betrayals was angry. He gave Isaiah a message to tell Hezekiah. Because of his sin and the sins of his people, the Babylonians were going to come and conquer Jerusalem. The Babylonians would know about all those precious gold and silver instruments in the Temple because Hezekiah was foolish enough to shown them. Hezekiah had taught them that Jerusalem was a city worth attacking. They would know exactly which weapons they would have to fight because Hezekiah had displayed those, too. Their army would march on Jerusalem, the City of David, and plunder it for all the things their officials had seen. Jerusalem would be totally destroyed by Babylon, and the people of Judah would be taken captive to different countries, far from their homeland. They would be overwhelmed with their terror and their grief. The Temple would be torn to the ground. And Hezekiah’s own descendants would be taken to Babylon to work as servants in the court of Babylon’s king (2 Kings 20:12-21.)
With this invasion of Babylon, the nation of Israel would lose their land. This was the land of Promise, part of God’s holy covenant with His chosen people. God had been so faithful to save them from Egypt and bring them into the land, but his people had not kept their side of the covenant. Over and over again, they had broken their promises, worshipping false gods and living in moral filth and wickedness. The nation that God had chosen to serve as his holy priests to the world had become even worse than the nations around them! They gave God no choice but to take away His blessings. They had utterly failed, and now the covenant was broken.
God is completely sovereign. He had seen this coming centuries before it happened. He warned them through Moses in the book of Deuteronomy. This book has the covenant of promise between God and His people. Part of that covenant said this:
“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. When the LORD your God brings you into the land He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you- a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant-then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Fear the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in His name. Do not follow other gods, the gods of the people around you; for the LORD your God is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you, and He will destroy you from the face of the land”
Later in the same book, Moses warned, “The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand (Deut. 28:49)” God had given the nation of Israel the highest privilege, they were His treasured possession. He had warned them about what would happen if they betrayed Him. How could they turn their backs on such an amazing gift?
King Hezekiah was saddened by what Isaiah had told him about Babylon. He knew it was the judgment God had warned Moses of so many hundreds of years before. He also knew that these things would not happen in his own lifetime. God would wait over a hundred years to bring the Babylonians as a judgment on His chosen people.
In that time, God raised up the prophet Jeremiah to warn the people of Jerusalem that the time had come. The Babylonian army was on its way to conquer Jerusalem and force them to move far away from their homes. Only the poorest Jews would be allowed to stay behind. Jeremiah cried out to warn his people, but most of them would not listen. Their hearts were too full of rebellion.