Click above to watch video.
OR
Click below to play audio and read along.
Good Tuesday morning my ‘Walking with Jesus’ friends,
I wonder how many of us made New Year’s Resolutions one week ago today. Now, seven days into 2025, how many of us are holding firm to those resolutions? And what are you finding is your most powerful asset in accomplishing those resolutions?
King Solomon, the wisest man of all time, gave us this good advice: “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” (Prov. 4:23) Have we learned how important it is to guard our hearts from anything that would draw our hearts away from God or truth or from personal integrity? Will this be a priority for us in 2025?
Yesterday I left you reflecting on a very powerful word from God to His people through the prophet Jeremiah about 2600 years ago. God was calling His people to recognize their moral and spiritual drift. God challenged them to REFORM or face serious consequences. What consequences? This next section of Jeremiah’s warning from God should have been terrifying to the Jews in Jerusalem.
In Jeremiah 7:12-15 God said: “Go now to the place in Shiloh where I first made a dwelling for My Name and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of My people Israel. While you were doing all these things, declares the LORD, I spoke to you again and again, but you did not listen; I called to you, but you did not answer. Therefore, what I did to Shiloh I will now do to the house that bears My Name, the temple you trust in, the place I gave to you and your ancestors. I will thrust you from My presence, just as I did all your fellow Israelites, the people of Ephraim.”
How well do you and I learn important lessons from our past and the past of our ancestors? Or do we disregard the wisdom of our ancestors, pridefully thinking that we are so much wiser, more sophisticated, with the advances of technology and even AI these days? Do we ignore those who’ve gone before us claiming they are from a different time, they didn’t understand, their times were too old fashioned?
The Jews of Jeremiah’s day were making that terrible mistake! For 30 years Jerusalem enjoyed a wonderful season of peace, prosperity and spiritual renewal under the leadership of young King Josiah. (640-609bc) (2 Chron. 34,35) Upon Josiah’s death his son Jehoahaz became King, but he was prideful and wicked, rejecting the God honoring model of leadership his father Josiah had shown him. God withdrew His hand of protection from Jerusalem in response to wicked, prideful King Jehoahaz and after only three months King Jehoahaz was shackled and dragged away like an animal by invading Egyptian Pharaoh Neco. (2 Chronicles 36:2-4)
Egyptian Neco then installed another of Josiah’s sons as king in Jerusalem but made sure he understood Jerusalem would be subject to Egyptian authority! Jehoiakim reigned eleven years as a wicked, vassal king in Jerusalem. (2 Chron. 36:5-9) It was during these years God sent these powerful messages through His prophet Jeremiah to King Jehoiakim and the Jews in Jerusalem who were very rapidly turning their backs on God and all He had done for them during, most recently, those 30 years with God honoring King Josiah.
When Jeremiah mentioned the word “Shiloh” a chill went up the spine of every Israelite no matter where they lived! They all knew the story, even though it had happened more than 400 years before. Shiloh was the place Joshua had first set up the Tabernacle of God’s Presence in the Promised Land, after leaving the 40 years of desert wanderings. (Joshua 18:1) This is the Tabernacle Moses had constructed at Mount Sinai! (Exodus 40)
Years later Shiloh was also the place to which Hannah brought her little miracle son Samuel to be mentored by Eli the High Priest serving at the Tabernacle. (1 Samuel 1:24-28) But unknown to Hannah, Shiloh had become a place of hypocrisy and wickedness, for Eli’s two sons, priests Hophni & Phinehas, were evil men defiling the Tabernacle of God with their unrepentant and flagrant sin. (1 Samuel 1:12) They even took the Ark of the Covenant out from the Most Holy Place of the Tabernacle and brought it to the battlefield where it was captured by the Philistines and taken into Philistine territory for several months. (1 Samuel 4:4,10,11) Eli died that day, as did both his wicked, priestly sons. Phinehas’ wife died in childbirth that same day, and they named the child “Ichabod” meaning ‘the Glory of the LORD has departed from Israel’. (1 Samuel 4:21)
While the Ark of the Covenant was eventually returned to Israel in a miraculous way (1 Samuel 6:1-18) the Israelites did not return it to defiled, shameful Shiloh, but instead sent it to Kiriath Jearim and the home of a man named Abinadab, for safekeeping. (1 Samuel 7:1,2) From there, several years later, King David brought the Ark finally to Jerusalem! (1 Chronicles 13:3-6; 15:14,15)
Asaph, one of King David’s worship leaders wrote a powerful Psalm/song which included a lament about what happened at Shiloh. We have it in our Bible as Psalm 78 and it calls us to be sure we understand the important spiritual aspect of parenting and learning lessons from our ancestors. (Ps. 78:1-8) Included in this Psalm Asaph was led by the Holy Spirit to write this record of Shiloh: “They put God to the test and rebelled against the Most High; they did not keep His statutes. Like their ancestors they were disloyal and faithless…They angered God with their high places; they aroused God’s jealousy with their idols…God abandoned the Tabernacle of Shiloh...He sent the Ark of His might into captivity, His splendor into the hands of the enemy. He gave His people over to the sword…” (Ps. 78:56-64)
Yes, it had been one of the darkest times in Israel’s history and now God, through Jeremiah, was warning that He was about to do the same thing again, only this time it would not be the Tent of Meeting, the Tabernacle, this time it would be the huge and glorious Temple of God in Jerusalem which would be destroyed! This time it would not be the small town of Shiloh, this time it would be the great city of Jerusalem which would be invaded, ransacked and left in ruins!
The people of Jerusalem in Jeremiah’s day were left trembling and troubled. Was it possible God would unleash His wrath for their wickedness and allow enemy forces to do in Jerusalem what the Philistines had done in Shiloh more than 400 years before? Remember my friends, God does not age. The same God who calls you and me to honor Him today is the same God speaking through Jeremiah 2600 years ago, and the same God who spoke through Samuel and before that Moses. Oh yes, we would do very well to learn from the past and renew our ability to discern how God is calling us to Himself today, my friends.
As 2025 begins, let’s renew our commitment to share with our children and grandchildren the greatness of our Lord Jesus Christ and the lessons we have each learned walking with Him! As Asaph wrote: “We will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD…then they would put their trust in God…” (Ps. 78:4,7) Here’s a worship song to help us do that! And I’ll meet you right back here again tomorrow.
Today’s Scripture: Jeremiah 7:12-15 & Ps.78.
Choose below to read or listen.
Jer. 7:12-15
 |  |
Psalm 78
| |
Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
Archived back issues of “Walking with Jesus” and other resources are available by clicking here to open our ‘home page’ (or go to HOME at upper right of this page).
Share with friends. Subscribe below for daily “Walking with Jesus”.