Sat.’s Devo - The Two Baskets of Figs

Read: Jeremiah 23:21-25:38; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-17; Psalm 84:1-12; Proverbs 25:15 God spoke against the prophets of the day who ran around giving messages they said were from the Lord. He had not given them those messages. God had his true prophets whose words were like grain but these false prophet’s words were like straw. They meant nothing and were not from God. *** God told Jeremiah that when the false prophets and priests asked him what prophecy had God burdened him with, Jeremiah was to reply that they were the burden. They had burdened him with their false prophecies and lies. *** King Nebuchadnezzar came to power in Babylon and took Jehoiachin and all the craftsmen and artisans with him. God gave Jeremiah a vision of two baskets of figs. One held fresh, ripe figs and the other was filled with bad rotten figs. God explained that the good figs represented the exiles that God sent to Babylon. (Daniel was in that group.) He would watch over them and bring them back. The other basket were all the people left in Jerusalem and those who had been sent to Egypt. They would be an object of horror and a symbol of evil to every nation on the earth. They would be disgraced, mocked, taunted and cursed wherever they ended up. *** For the past 23 years, Jeremiah had prophesied for the people to repent or else they would see destruction yet they people had not listened. They had continued to provoke the anger of the Lord by worshiping idols they made with their own hands. Now, God was gathering the armies of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon as his deputy to destroy them. Their partying would come to a stop. They would serve Babylon for 70 years and then God would turn on the Babylonians and punish them for their sins. They will be punished in proportion to the suffering they caused God’s people. *** God sent Jeremiah to all the nations with a cup of anger to drink from. First he was sent to Jerusalem and the other towns of Judah because judgment starts at the house of the Lord. Then it went out to a list of other nations ending with Babylon. Nation after nation was going to experience God’s great whirlwind of fury rising from the most distant corners of the earth. *** The dead would fill the earth from one end to the other and no one would mourn for them or gather up their bodies to bury them. The land would be made desolate. *** In Thessalonians, Paul warns the people of his day not to be fooled by people who say the day of the Lord had already begun. It will not happen until there is a great rebellion against God and the man of lawlessness is revealed - the one who brings destruction. He will exalt himself and defy everything that people call god and every object of worship, He will even sit in the temple of God claiming that he himself is God. He will deceive the people into believing his counterfeit power and signs and miracles. He will deceive those who believe his lies and enjoy evil rather than believing the truth. *** I pray with Paul that we would always be thankful that God chose us to experience salvation, that comes through the Spirit who makes us holy and comforts us in everything good thing we do and say.