Jeremiah session 9: chapters 26-29

• 26:1-6. Speak all that God tells us to speak (vs. false prophets saying whatever they want) - Law and Gospel, not to itching ears. Contrast the Jesus Seminar, for example. Speaking the Word requires knowing it. Fear the LORD, as Jeremiah did, rather than fearing man.
• 26:7-24. Quotation of Micah 3:12. Some prophets were martyred--Jeremiah's fears were well-grounded. Contrast the U.S.'s (theoretically) true freedom of religion with 1 Kings 19:10 and Hebrews 11:37.
• 27:1-7. Action prophecy--a yoke on his neck, symbolizing Judah's future servitude under Babylon. Better to submit to this yoke than to resist and get a worse punishment. Sin produced a rock and a hard place.
• 27:17-22. All the Temple vessels were eventually taken away and misused (as in Daniel 5, Belshazzar's drinking party).
• Chapter 28. Hananiah prophesied lies, dying as a result.
• Chapter 29. Jeremiah's letter of exhortation to the exiles: build homes in Babylon, marry there, and pray for Babylon's welfare (since the exiles were to be there for a long time). Shemaiah, a false prophet, receives God's condemnation and judgment--even on his descendants! Why? See Exodus 20:5-6.