God’s Promises to Israel :: By Sean Gooding

Jeremiah 33:12-18

“Thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘In this place which is desolate, without man and without beast, and in all its cities, there shall again be a dwelling place of shepherds causing their flocks to lie down. 13 In the cities of the mountains, in the cities of the lowland, in the cities of the South, in the land of Benjamin, in the places around Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, the flocks shall again pass under the hands of him who counts them,’ says the Lord. 14 ‘Behold, the days are coming,’ says the Lord, ‘that I will perform that good thing which I have promised to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah:

15 ‘In those days and at that time I will cause to grow up to David a Branch of righteousness; He shall execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. 16 In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell safely. And this is the name by which she will be called: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.’ 17 “For thus says the Lord: ‘David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel; 18 nor shall the priests, the Levites, lack a man to offer burnt offerings before Me, to kindle grain offerings, and to sacrifice continually.'”

As we continue our look at God’s plans for Israel in the future, I hope that you are taking the time to research this for yourself. My desire for you, or anyone who reads these articles/lessons is that they would be inspired to be students of the Scriptures. I pray that you would dive in and become very, very familiar with the Bible, and when you hear stuff that does not align with the Bible, that your ‘scripture radar’ would go off and the Holy Spirit will begin to call verses that you have read and studied to mind so that you can know the truth and not be fooled; or as the scripture says, ‘tossed about with every wind of doctrine.’

Today, we will look at this promise that God gave to Jeremiah the prophet even as Jerusalem was falling into the hands of the Babylonian Empire, often called the Chaldeans. In Genesis 49:10, we get one of the first promises about the persistence of the Kings of Israel.

“The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.”

We are told that the kings of Israel would reign from the tribe of Judah and that the power, the scepter, would not depart from Judah. This is the promise that the King tribe would be Judah and that the promise is forever. Although we cannot see it today with our physical eyes, this promise is fulfilled in Jesus. He is the oldest living male from the tribe of Judah and, as such, has the right to rule as the King of the Jews. He was executed as such (see John 19:19). Pilate understood who Jesus was, even if the Jews did not.

In our text that is quoted above, we have a promise to the nation of Israel from God through the prophet Jeremiah. At this time, somewhere between 627BC and 582BC, these events occurred, and the Southern Kingdom of Judah and Benjamin was sacked and overrun by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. It was horrible; women began to eat their own children, the dead lay in the streets, and their bodies were left as food for the animals and the birds. The Babylonians carried about 10,000 youths and young men away to serve in Babylon. This is where we get the book of Daniel from and hear of the exploits of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego; these young men were among the captives that were taken to live in Babylon.

Jeremiah is heartbroken for his beloved city, Jerusalem, and for his people of Israel. He has been a front-row witness to the wrath of God. He saw firsthand what happens when people defy God and think they can do whatever they want and get away with it; they were wrong. Jeremiah saw bloodshed and pain as never before, and sadly, his ministry was not one of hope but one of judgment and suffering. As such, he is asking God for a bit of hope; is there some light at the end here? God answers him in these verses and makes three promises.

  • The day is coming for God to do good things for Israel, verse 14

He promises that there will once again be flocks in and around Jerusalem and in Judah, the province where Jerusalem is. There will be shepherds and flocks and enough sheep and goats to require counting. This refers to commerce and people living there. One day, God promises that Jerusalem will be populated again, and there will be business, farms and activity. If we only had this verse, we could simply turn to the book of Nehemiah and Ezra and say they’re fulfilled. The captives came back and set up houses and had families, and by the time Jesus came along, commerce and even a new Temple were there. But we would be missing an important part of the promise God made to Jeremiah.

  • There will be a new King, verse 14

This is a promise about Jesus, the Branch of righteousness that will execute judgment and righteousness on the earth. We are told that this will happen when Jerusalem dwells in ‘safety’; this has not happened as yet. There are constant threats from the Palestinians and other groups attacking Israel. There is no peace or safety right now. Soon, a false ‘safety’ will be sold to them by the New World Order, and they will jump at it, but that peace will not last for a long time.

But God goes even further with His promise, and He tells Jeremiah in verse 17, “David shall NEVER lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel.” Notice the word ‘NEVER’; this is a promise that once there is a King, the Branch in verse 15, and He is established as the King, this throne will never be vacated again. This has not happened, so this is a promise that is yet to be fulfilled. God, then, must have a plan to restore Israel and appoint the monarch (Jesus). Once appointed, He will reign forever; thus, God is not done with Israel.

  • The perpetual priesthood, verse 18

On top of the promise of the eternal King, there is a promise of an eternal priesthood. Not Jesus being the High Priest/King like we explored in Hebrews but priests from the tribe of Levi, as God promised Aaron in the Torah when the priesthood was established. Once again, there is no need for a priesthood without Jerusalem. There is no need for a priesthood without a Temple and without sacrifices (but that is another lesson).

Suffice it to say, these are promises that God made to Jeremiah about the future of Israel, and these have not been realized as yet. We will see them be fulfilled and see the joy on Jeremiah’s face when he sees God’s faithfulness. We can trust that God will be faithful to us because He is faithful to Israel. He is the God who keeps His promises.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

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Futile Thinking and Darkened Hearts :: By The Gospelist

To study any subject, a researcher must have a solid operational definition of the concept that he wishes to explore.

This operational definition must be agreed upon by most researchers in the field so that, when it is tested, everyone has the same understanding of the concept that is being investigated.

According to the American Psychological Association, intelligence is the ability to derive information, learn from experience, adapt to the environment, and understand and correctly utilize thought and reason.

Although it is somewhat simplistic, it is easiest to view pure intelligence in terms of the function of a computer. A computer exhibits intelligence in three primary ways:

  1. It must be able to acquire a great deal of information (Learning).
  2. It must be able to store this information (Memory).
  3. It must be able to efficiently utilize the information that it has stored effectively (problem-solving).

On the other hand, wisdom is very different than intelligence. It is what guides intelligence so that we can distinguish truth from falsehood and right from wrong.

Wisdom ensures that we do not use our intelligence in a foolish manner.

Our learning and reason do us no good if we believe that, because it gets hot in the summer, it is the result of climate change rather than the changing of the seasons.

The seasons change primarily because of the movement of the earth around the sun. When the earth’s axis points toward the sun, it is summer for that hemisphere.

And it gets hot.

If we believe it gets hot in the summer because of climate change, which wisdom proves is a false ideology, then all our learning is wasted, and our thinking becomes futile. Instead of relying on established science to understand weather patterns and temperatures, we adopt a foolish and self-destructive way of understanding our world. This leads us to create problems rather than solve them. For instance,

  1. We begin to eliminate effective means of creating energy, thereby returning us to a more primitive way of living and shortening our lifespans.
  2. We allow forests to become overgrown, resulting in dangerous wildfires that destroy lives and property.
  3. We begin to eliminate farming, which harms the world’s food supply.
  4. We get rid of our fertilizers, which further erodes our food supply.
  5. We get rid of our modes of transportation and farming equipment that enhance our lifestyles and create prosperity.
  6. We allow the evil Globalists to shut down our farms and then blame the resulting hunger on climate change.

Doing any of these things is foolish because they lead to famine and poverty. Those who possess wisdom would never devote their intelligence to this kind of idiocy.

Wisdom, which exists in the mind of God, dictates that we be fruitful and multiply, increase in number, fill the earth, and subdue it. Those who follow God’s law are wise. Doing so results in prosperity and enhances our way of life.

Those who reject wisdom think it is important to reduce the population or study the vapor that comes out of the hind end of a cow.

Doing that makes you a fool. Your learning becomes worthless, you commit to memory bad ideology, which inhibits your ability to reason, and you become incapable of solving real problems.

Now that we have an operational definition of our two most important terms, wisdom and intelligence, let’s apply them to a particularly destructive phenomenon to see how they hold up.

The phenomenon that we will apply these terms to is Social Justice. Since this is a worldly term, we will turn to one of the most evil organizations on the planet, the U.N., to define it.

According to the U.N., Social Justice is the worldview that everyone deserves equal economics, political and social rights and opportunities. The reason that this is a pernicious ideology devoid of wisdom is because it rejects an indisputable truth of God.

It denies the innate sinfulness of human nature.

The lazy and those who are drunkards do not deserve equal economics. Those who engage in criminal behavior do not deserve political and social rights and opportunities. These people are destructive to society, and they deserve to experience the consequences of their own bad choices.

Many of these people deserve prison, not special privileges that provide them with a greater status above that of the law-abiding or the productive.

However, those who intend to bestow these rights upon us do not believe in the innate sinfulness of human nature. They think we are all vermin. Therefore, they believe in unchecked power, brought about by sowing discord, so that they can dispose of their pests at their leisure.

They possess plenty of intelligence but no wisdom.

They then move to create a social construct that they can impose on society to help bring about its downfall. Demoralized people are much easier to control.

They have termed this social construct ‘Social Justice.’

In order to dispose of the vermin more effectively, they must create discord throughout the world. They must praise the deviants of society and oppress the righteous, then move to appoint leaders in each society that will do the same.

They must also undermine any institution that stands on Godly moral values. When they are successful, what was once good becomes evil, and what was evil becomes good.

Once they successfully educate the young of society on Social Justice, this philosophy becomes the foundation of one’s thoughts. Suddenly, vagrants become ‘the homeless’; criminals have a right to steal because they are oppressed by capitalism; drunkards become alcoholics; homosexuality is moral and heterosexuality is immoral; gun control prevents criminals from committing crime; abortion is family planning; child molesters are ‘minor-attracted people,’ and the list goes on.

Therefore, Social Justice is another human construct that is designed to undermine true justice. It was devised by those who invent ways of doing evil to undermine Godly justice.

When a society becomes faithless and adopts this false ideology, it is easily subject to totalitarian control. That is why the evil Globalists love this ideology and have imposed it mercilessly in America.

It is important that Christians understand Social Justice because this demonic ideology has found its way into our churches. There have been a number of false teachers in the church, some of them extremely popular, who have begun to deconstruct the Gospel so that it can be replaced with this abomination.

In one of my previous articles, “The Deconstruction of the Gospel,” I used Tim Keller as an example of how this is done.

In the following video, Tim Keller is asked by a young woman to explain the Christian view of homosexuality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUNyUwK17Nc&t=1s

This question is a dream come true for any Christian who is anxious to share the Gospel. When young people come to us and ask us about our faith, this is a golden opportunity to share the love, mercy, and grace of Christ.

Unfortunately, Keller proceeded to deconstruct the Gospel through the process of over-intellectualization.

When asked about homosexuality, Keller briefly looks thoughtful and then claims that “there are three things that Christians say” regarding homosexuality.

Even though no Christian says these three things, these are the three things that we allegedly say:

  1. “We” invoke the good Samaritan parable (which has nothing to do with homosexuality) because we are duty-bound to serve our neighbors. Keller claims that Jesus died for ‘people who oppose him’ rather than having died for our sins. The Christian is called not to proclaim the Gospel but to create a great place for people of all beliefs and faiths to live in.
  2. The Gospel that saves us by Grace pulls out the self-righteousness that goes along with religious belief. It is the self-righteousness of the Christian that causes great suffering to gay people. The Gospel takes away our self-righteousness so that gay people have a great place to live in.
  3. God gives us directions on how to live according to his ‘design.’ Sex is for a man and woman in marriage because to do otherwise is a violation of God’s ‘design.’ When you do not follow God’s ‘design,’ you are missing out on God’s best life for you.

The first thing that we should note is that this is a different gospel than the one Paul preached. The Gospel saves us from our sins; it has nothing to do with having our best lives now or condemning the person who proclaims it.

The takeaway from this pointless form of witnessing is that homosexuality is not God’s best for you (although it may be, by implication, God’s second best for you). There are no words of salvation in his pathetic attempt to answer a simple question.

What Keller was expressing was the worldly idea of Social Justice, not the Gospel. Unlike the Gospel that Paul preached, Keller’s gospel is worthless and forgettable.

It justifies wickedness and castigates the faithful.

The Christian response to this young woman’s question is that homosexuality is a terrible sin in the eyes of God. But we have good news for all homosexuals. Jesus died for this sin, and he calls all who are involved in same-sex relationships to repent and be forgiven in His Holy name.

He also calls those who approve of it to repent as well.

When we compare the true Gospel to Keller’s deconstructed Social Justice gospel, we see that there really is no comparison. Sharing the Gospel leads to repentance; sharing the Social Justice gospel leads to worldliness and rebellion against God.

We can say for certain that none of these people are going to repent as a result of Keller’s form of witnessing. By withholding the true Gospel, Keller himself served to block the way to salvation for these people.

We can also point out that, intellectually, no one will learn from Keller’s completely useless diatribe. No one will be able to remember what he said, and those who hear this kind of nonsense will be unable to escape the evil of homosexuality.

Tim Keller was the poster child for those who are wise in their own eyes. The blood of these people is on his hands.

Due to the fact that Social Justice is just another demonic, man-made social construct, we Christians will have to take it upon ourselves to provide an operational definition of this term in order to identify and defeat it when it is proclaimed.

Especially when it is proclaimed from our pulpits.

We will define Social Justice as an attempt to redefine justice as it exists in the eyes of God. Its purpose is to change the laws so that good is evil and evil is good. Theft becomes a civil right, murderers are misunderstood victims, and the wanton destruction of property becomes a ‘peaceful protest.’

There is no question that the Antichrist will be a Social Justice warrior.

The purpose of Social Justice is to break down society so that the evil Globalists can swoop in and transform it into a totalitarian police state. Its adherents are slaves to sin, and God will turn those who follow this doctrine into servants of the autocracy.

The evils that Social Justice visits on a society are numerous and devastating. The following are some of them:

  • Instead of hard work, Social Justice promotes government dependency.
  • Instead of people learning a useful skill, they learn government propaganda that is designed to enslave its adherents (ex. Cuba, North Korea).
  • Criminals, instead of being incarcerated, are kept on the streets, and the resulting chaos is labeled by our bought-off corrupt media as ‘gun violence.’
  • The Globalists use their wealth to create a cultlike devotion to their new social construct by censoring dissenting voices.
  • Those who learn this propaganda become incapable of solving real-world problems. Like all who devote themselves to a cult, they must rely on the cult leaders to make decisions for them.
  • The creation of a Marxist network of enforcers, such as ‘brownshirts’ or a ‘Stasi,’ is then developed when the populace begins to perceive the futility of the ‘elites’ social constructs.

Conversely, those who believe in the “Protestant Work Ethic” almost always succeed in their endeavors. They may experience failure from time to time, but if they hold to this ethic, they will learn from experience, remember past failures, and become better prepared to solve problems in the future.

Success is where hard work and opportunity intersect.

This ethic leads to prosperity and the lifting of people out of poverty and into self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency leads to independence and happiness.

The elite understand that a self-sufficient populace has no interest in being enslaved by the self-appointed ruling class. Therefore, they despise self-sufficiency.

Those who possess the “Protestant Work Ethic” will inevitably develop good problem-solving skills. Totalitarians have no use for good problem solvers. That is because good problem solvers have no use for moronic autocrats who cannot even manage their own pathetic lives.

Totalitarians who believe in Social Justice are violently opposed to this ideology, and their minions are more than happy to express their displeasure at those who possess wisdom.

That is why they employ Marxist brownshirts to keep the masses in line.

Globalists are determined to inculcate Marxism into our culture, and they lavishly fund the various Communist Front Groups in this country for this purpose.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), The National Organization For Women (NOW), and numerous other groups are dedicated to creating discord in this society.

The ACLU does not care about civil rights, the SPLC does not care about the poor, the NAACP does not care about black people, and NOW does not care about women.

And they never have.

These organizations are close to outliving their usefulness, so we seldom hear from them anymore. The evil Globalists are now moving on to those groups who are much more violent and dangerous.

Their social constructs always come into conflict with reality, and paid enforcers become necessary to exact obedience.

Since the Globalists cannot rely on the intellect or science to draw people into their ideology, they support Marxist saboteurs to fool people into believing their idiotic ideas are compassionate. They must play upon their emotions and their discontent to grow their ranks and gain political power.

When these organizations become ineffective, the elites turn to violence.

Organizations like those above push destructive ideologies that are designed to weaken a nation. They begin by bringing the idea of hard work into disrepute with such ideas as ‘Affirmative Action.’

Affirmative Action is based on the idea that people are held back by their ethnicity rather than their bad ideology. It then attempts to advance these misguided people over those who have a more productive ideology.

They then move to insist that people’s ethnicity take precedence over their competence. This leads to failure and greater dependence upon the elite.

Those who resist this ideology are then attacked with a new social construct called ‘racism.’ This false ideology insists:

  • Because we have superficial biological characteristics that are different, we are alien to one another. In reality, calling someone a ‘racist’ is the equivalent of calling someone a ‘personist.’
  • Like Darwin, we are to believe that some ‘races’ are favored over others and that people only succeed because of their skin color rather than competence. They want us to believe those who do not look like us are a different species.
  • Those who adopt this ideology are doomed to failure in every endeavor, which plays into the hands of the autocrats. They desire to turn us into a nation of ‘Hunter Biden’s’ who must rely on ‘the big guy’ for their success.

Once again, we see that it is bad ideology that not only is destructive but leads people to use their intellect in a foolish manner. When we adopt the idea of race, we become incapable of cohesion. Our memories accept divisiveness, and we come up with moronic ideas like ‘Affirmative Action,’ which exacerbates problems rather than solving them.

This ideology gives the pawns of the Globalists the ability to divide society and create an ‘us vs. them’ mentality among a populace. We can be placed at each other’s throats by falsely calling one group racist while the other group sees themselves as victims of racism.

This sick ideology has made ‘bearing false witness against our neighbor’ a virtue. It has given rise to the term’ virtue signaling’ even though those who are ‘signaling’ possess no virtue.

Their ‘virtue signaling’ looks more like ‘vice signaling.’

When our churches begin to fail, the people are eventually placed by God at the mercy of those who have great wealth and power. As we are now in the midst of a great falling away from the faith, the evil Globalists have found it much easier to begin the process of enslaving us to bad ideology.

There is no question that we are being made helpless by adopting bad ideology. We now have numerous examples of how this causes us to lose the ability to solve problems.

  • Instead of being taught reading, writing and arithmetic, our children are taught the worthless ideology of ‘Critical Race Theory.’
  • Critical Race Theory teaches us to judge the actions of others based on ethnicity rather than one’s (criminal) behavior.
  • When the police do their jobs in dealing with these people, they are accused of fascism by our corrupt press corps and are themselves prosecuted.
  • The various communist front groups then call for ‘Defunding the police,’ which creates chaos in our communities.
  • Those who have adopted the demonic ideology of Social Justice are then helpless and cannot stand against the various front groups to correct the problems they have created.

The resulting anarchy causes societies to be more amenable to totalitarian control, and the people have no rational means of correcting it.

Those who promote bad ideology then move to pervert the memories of a society.

They use bad ideology to remove obstacles to totalitarian control, such as condemning nations like America and the nation of Israel.

They create ‘narratives’ that lead people to conclude that these nations do not have the right to exist. They falsely claim that these nations are oppressors that must be eradicated. They create new fiction such as:

  • Promoting the 1619 project, which falsely labels America a slave state.
  • They then accuse America of forever being guilty of slavery even though it is the only nation that fought a bloody civil war to eradicate it.
  • Promoting the idea that an entity called a ‘Palestinian’ State actually existed in history.
  • They accuse Israel of being an ‘apartheid’ state due to their efforts to protect themselves from the terrorism of the ‘Palestinians’ who believe Israel has no right to exist.

Now that Social Justice has been inculcated into our culture, it has rendered its people incapable of solving problems. We have become feckless and useless and in danger of degenerating into a more savage means of existence.

We have begun to fail at everything we put our hands to.

We cannot solve our crime problems because of this putrid ideology. We make bad decisions, such as employing unqualified people to serve in roles that require a high degree of expertise, and now many of our institutions are failing.

Especially our judiciary.

If we look at the various third-world cesspools around the country, they are all dominated by this ideology. New York City, Washington D.C., Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, just to name a few, are now nearly unrecoverable due to this evil.

The residents of these cities no longer have the ability to solve their own problems.

As we fail in every endeavor, we look at each other in wonder as to why we cannot accomplish anything of any significance.

If we continue on this faithless path, we will meet the same fate as the nation of Israel when it rebelled against God. When we refuse to obey the laws of God, he withdraws from us and turns us over to our own idiotic ideologies.

The same curses that befell the nation of Israel when they rebelled against God will come to us as well.

16 “You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.

17 Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed.

18 The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.

19 You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.

20 The Lord will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him.

21 The Lord will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess.

22 The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish.

23 The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. 24 The Lord will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed.

25 The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth.

26 Your carcasses will be food for all the birds and the wild animals, and there will be no one to frighten them away.

27 The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured.

28 The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind.

29 At midday you will grope about like a blind person in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you.”

None of these failures have anything to do with global warming, or homophobia, or racism, or ‘trans-hatred,’ or any other reprobate ideology that was created to inflict evil on the culture. All these things result from bad ideology that arises out of faithlessness and causes a populace to reject the law of God.

The most inexcusable part of this is those pastors who preach this ideology from their pulpits.

Those pastors who seize upon the Social Justice gospel soon find themselves preaching a different gospel than the one Paul preached. These are false teachers who have ‘deconstructed’ the Gospel, have fallen from Grace, and are accursed.

What could be worse in the eyes of God than trading the pure gold of the Gospel for the pig slop of Social Justice?

They become futile in their thinking and darkened in their understanding of the Scriptures. They become separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.

These people cause divisions in the church by partnering with Godless groups like the LGBT and Black Lives Matter. They refer to their congregations as ‘white supremacists’ and demand that they repent of their ethnicity. They ordain ‘gay marriages’ and chastise those who demand that we stand on Scripture rather than embrace their worldly philosophies.

And they stand silently by while innocent children are sexually mutilated.

In these false teachers, and their congregations, is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:

“You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them'” (Matthew 13:14-15).

But blessed are those who do not adopt the wisdom of the world, who have eyes to see and ears to hear.

Those who are faithful do not reject the law of the Lord God Almighty or spurn the word of the Holy One of Israel.

And they possess the wisdom to condemn sick ideologies like Social Justice.

Those ‘pastors’ who adopt this ideology, thereby suppressing the Gospel, need to understand that the Lord’s anger will burn against them. He will raise his hand to strike them down, and their dead bodies will be like refuse in the streets.

Their master will come on a day when they do not expect him and at an hour they are unaware of. They will be cut to pieces and assigned a place with hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

I don’t think Jesus was using hyperbole when he issued these rebukes.

www.gospelist.net