Day 247: True Repentance (2026)

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and you're listening to the Bible in a year podcast where

we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of Scripture.

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discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story today.

It is day 247.

I know I keep saying this, but well done.

Gosh, we're reading a lot of chapters today.

We have five chapters.

Jeremiah 33 and 34.

Judith 34 and 5.

Proverbs 16 verses 29 through 33.

As always, the Bible translation that I'm reading from is the revised standard version.

Second, Catholic Edition.

I'm using the great adventure Bible from Ascension.

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As I said, it is day 247.

We got a lot to get through, so let's get started with Jeremiah 33 and 34.

Judith 34 and 5.

Proverbs 16 verses 29 through 33.

The book of the prophet Jeremiah chapter 33, healing after punishment.

The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah a second time while he was still shut up in the court

of the guard.

Thus says the Lord who made the earth, the Lord who formed it to establish it, the Lord

is his name.

Call to me and I will answer you and will tell you great and hidden things which you have

not known.

For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the houses of this city and the houses of

the kings of Judah which were torn down to make a defense against the siege mounds and

before the sword.

The caldians are coming in to fight and to fill them with the dead bodies of men whom

I shall strike in my anger and my wrath.

For I have hidden my face from this city because of all their wickedness.

Behold.

I will bring to it health and healing and I will heal them and reveal to them abundance

of prosperity and security.

I will restore the fortunes of Judah and the fortunes of Israel and rebuild them as they

were at first.

I will cleanse them from all the guilt of their sin against me and I will forgive all

the guilt of their sin and rebellion against me.

And this city shall be to me a name of joy, a praise and a glory before all the nations

of the earth who shall hear of all the good that I do for them.

They shall fear and tremble because of all the good and all the prosperity I provide for

it.

Thus says the Lord.

In this place of which you say it is a waste without man or beast.

In the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate without man or

inhabitant or beast, there shall be heard again, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness,

the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.

The voices of those who sing as they bring thank offerings to the house of the Lord give

thanks to the Lord of hosts for the Lord is good for his mercy and doers forever.

For I will restore the fortunes of the land as at first says the Lord.

Thus says the Lord of hosts.

In this place which is waste without man or beast and in all of its cities there shall

again be habitations of shepherds resting their flocks.

In the cities of the hill country, in the cities of the Sheffala and in the cities of the

Nigev, in the land of Benjamin the place is about Jerusalem and in the cities of Judah

the flocks shall again pass under the hands of the one who counts them says the Lord.

Behold, the days are coming says the Lord.

When I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous branch to spring forth for David.

Anish will execute justice and righteousness in the land.

In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will dwell securely.

And this is the name by which it will be called.

The Lord is our righteousness.

For thus says the Lord.

David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel.

And the Levitical priests shall never lack a man in my presence to offer burnt offerings,

to burn serial offerings and to make sacrifices forever.

The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah.

Thus says the Lord.

If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night so that day and

night will not come at their appointed time, then also my covenant with David my servant

may be broken so that he shall not have a son to reign on his throne and my covenant

with the Levitical priests my ministers.

As the host of heaven cannot be numbered and the sands of the sea cannot be measured,

so I will multiply the descendants of David my servant and the Levitical priests to minister

to me.

The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah.

Have you not observed what these people are saying?

The Lord has rejected the two families which he chose.

Thus, they have despised my people so that they are no longer a nation in their sight.

Thus says the Lord.

If I have not established my covenant with day and night and the ordinances of heaven and

earth, then I will reject the descendants of Jacob and David my servant and will not

choose one of his descendants to rule over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

For I will restore their fortunes and will have mercy upon them.

Chapter 34

Death in captivity predicted for Zedekiah.

The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, when Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon and

all his army and all the kingdoms of the earth under his dominion and all the peoples were

fighting against Jerusalem and all of its cities, thus says the Lord.

The God of Israel.

Go and speak to Zedekiah King of Judah and say to him, thus says the Lord.

Behold, I am giving this city into the hand of the King of Babylon and he shall burn it

with fire.

You shall not escape from his hand, but shall surely be captured and delivered into his

hand.

You shall see the King of Babylon, I to I, and speak with him face to face, and you shall

go to Babylon.

Yet, hear the word of the Lord of Zedekiah King of Judah.

Thus says the Lord concerning you, you shall not die by the sword, you shall die in peace.

And as spices were burned for your fathers, the former kings who were before you, so

men shall burn spices for you and lament for you, saying alas, Lord.

I have spoken the word, says the Lord.

Then Jeremiah the Prophet spoke all these words to Zedekiah King of Judah in Jerusalem,

when the army of the King of Babylon was fighting against Jerusalem and against all the cities

of Judah that were left, Lakshish and Azakah, for these were the only fortified cities of

Judah that remained.

Treatment of Hebrew slaves.

The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord after King Zedekiah had made a covenant

with all the people in Jerusalem to make a proclamation of liberty to them that everyone

should set free his Hebrew slaves male and female so that no one should enslave a

Jew his brother.

And they obeyed all the princes and all the people who had entered into the covenant

that everyone would set free his slave male or female so that they would not be enslaved

again.

They obeyed and set them free.

But afterward, they turned around and took back the male and female slaves they had set

free and brought them into subjection as slaves.

The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah from the Lord.

This says the Lord the God of Israel.

I made a covenant with your fathers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, out

of the house of bondage saying, at the end of six years, each of you must set free the

fellow Hebrew who has been sold to you and has served you six years.

You must set him free from your service.

But your fathers did not listen to me or incline their ears to me.

You recently repented and did what was right in my eyes by proclaiming liberty each to his

neighbor and you made a covenant before me in the house which is called by my name.

But then you turned around and profaned my name when each of you took back his male and

female slaves whom you had set free according to their desire and you brought them into

subjection to be your slaves.

Therefore thus says the Lord, you have not obeyed me by proclaiming liberty, everyone

to his brother and to his neighbor, behold, I proclaim to you liberty to the sword, to

pestilence and to famine says the Lord.

I will make you a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth and the men who transgressed my

covenant and did not keep the terms of the covenant which they made before me, I will

make like the calf which they cut in two and pass between its parts.

The princes of Judah, the princes of Jerusalem, the unix, the priests and all the people of

the land who passed between the parts of the calf and I will give them into the hand

of their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their lives.

Their dead bodies shall be food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth.

And Zedekaya, king of Judah, and his princes, I will give into the hands of their enemies

and into the hand of those who seek their lives, into the hand of the army of the king of

Babylon which has withdrawn from you.

Behold, I will command, says the Lord, and will bring them back to this city and they

will fight against it and take it and burn it with fire.

I will make the cities of Judah a desolation without inhabitant.

The Book of Judah, chapter 3, in treaties for peace.

So they sent messengers to sue for peace and said, Behold, we, the servants of Nebuchadnezzar,

the great king, lie prostrate before you, do with us whatever you will.

Behold our buildings in all our land and all our wheat fields and our flocks and herds

and all our sheepfools with their tents lie before you, do with them whatever you please.

Our cities also and their inhabitants are your slaves, come and deal with them in any

way that seems good to you.

The men came to Halafreniz and told him all this.

Then he went down to the sea coast with his army and stationed garrisons in the hilltop

cities and took picked men from them as his allies.

And these people and all in the country round about welcomed him with garlands and dances

and tambourines.

And he demolished all their shrines and cut down their sacred groves for it had been

given to him to destroy all the gods of the land so that all nations should worship Nebuchadnezzar

only and all their tongues and tribes should call upon him as God.

Then he came to the edge of Australia near Dothan, fronting the great ridge of Judea.

Here he camped between Giba and Sathapolis and remained for a whole month in order to

assemble all the supplies for his army.

Judea prepares for defense.

By this time the people of Israel living in Judea heard of everything that Halafreniz,

the general of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of the Assyrians, had done to the nations and

how he had plundered and destroyed all their temples.

They were therefore very greatly terrified at his approach and were alarmed both for Jerusalem

and for the temple of the Lord their God.

For they had only recently returned from the captivity and all the people of Judea were

newly gathered together and the sacred vessels and the altar and the temple had been consecrated

after their proclamation.

So they sent to every district of Samaria and to Kona and Bethharon and Belma'in and Jericho

and to Choba and Asura and the Valley of Salem and immediately seized all the high hilltops

and fortified the villages on them and stored up food and preparation for war since their

fields had recently been harvested.

And Joachim, the high priest who was in Jerusalem at that time, wrote to the people of Bethulia

in Bethamasthaim which faces Estrellaun opposite the plain near Dothan, ordering them to seize

the passes up into the hills.

Since by them Judea could be invaded and it was easy to stop any who tried to enter for

the approach was narrow, only wide enough for two men at the most.

Israel's prayer and penance

So the Israelites did as Joachim the high priest and the senate of the whole people of Israel

in session at Jerusalem had given order and every man of Israel cried out to God with great

fervor and they humbled themselves with much fasting.

They and their wives and their children and their cattle and every resident alien and

hired laborer and purchased slave they all clothed themselves with sackcloth.

And all the men and women of Israel and their children living at Jerusalem prostrated themselves

before the temple and put ashes on their head and spread out their sackcloth before the

Lord.

They even surrounded the altar with sackcloth and cried out in unison praying earnestly

to the God of Israel not to give up their infants as pray and their wives as booty and the

cities they had inherited to be destroyed and the sanctuary to be profaned and desecrated

to the malicious joy of the Gentiles.

So the Lord heard their prayers and looked upon their affliction.

For the people fasted many days throughout Judea and in Jerusalem before the sanctuary

of the Lord Almighty.

And Joachim the high priest and all the priests who stood before the Lord and ministered to

the Lord with their loins clothed with sackcloth offered the continual burnt offerings and

the vows and free will offerings of the people.

With ashes upon their turbans they cried out to the Lord with all their might to look

with favor upon the whole house of Israel.

Chapter 5.

Halafrini's Council Against the Israelites

When Halafrini's the general of the Syrian army heard that the people of Israel had prepared

for war and had closed the passes in the hills and had fortified all the high hilltops

and set up barricades in the plains, he was very angry.

So he called together all the princes of Moab and the commanders of Ammon and all the governors

of the coastland instead to them.

Normally you can't deny it, what people is this that lives in the hill country, what

cities do they inhabit, how large is their army and in what does their power or strength

consist?

Who rules over them as king leading their army?

And why have they alone, of all who live in the west, refused to come out and meet

me?

Accuors report

Then Accuor, the leader of all the Ammonites, said to him,

Let my Lord now hear a word from the mouth of your servant, and I will tell you the truth

about this people that dwells in the nearby mountain district.

No falsehood shall come from your servant's mouth.

This people is descended from the caldians.

At one time they lived in Mesopotamia because they would not follow the gods of their fathers

who were in Caldia.

For they had left the ways of their ancestors and they worshipped the god of heaven, the

god they had come to know.

Hence, they drove them out from the presence of their gods and they fled to Mesopotamia

and lived there for a long time.

And their god commanded them to leave the place where they were living and to go to the

land of Canaan.

There they settled and prospered with much gold and silver and very many cattle.

When a famine spread over Canaan, they went down to Egypt and lived there as long as they

had food.

And there they became a great multitude, so great that they could not be counted.

So the king of Egypt became hostile to them.

He took advantage of them and set them to making bricks and humbled them and made slaves

of them.

And they cried out to their god and he afflicted the whole land of Egypt with incurable

plagues.

And so the Egyptians drove them out of their site.

Then God dried up the red sea before them and he led them by the way of Sinai and Kadesh

Barnia and drove out all the people of the wilderness.

So they lived in the land of the Amorites and by their might destroyed all the inhabitants

of Hechbun.

And crossing over the Jordan, they took possession of all the hill country.

And they drove out before them the Canaanites and the parasites and the Jebusites and the

Shekhamites and all the Gurghasites and lived there a long time.

As long as they did not sin against their god, they prospered for the god who hates

iniquity is with them.

But when they had departed from the way which he had appointed for them, they were utterly

defeated in many battles and were led away captive to a foreign country, the temple of

their god was raised to the ground and their cities were captured by their enemies.

But now they have returned to their god and have come back from the places to which they

were scattered and have occupied Jerusalem where their sanctuary is and have settled

in the hill country because it was uninhabited.

Now therefore my master and lord, if there is any unwitting error in this people and they

sin against their god and we find out their offense, then we will go up and defeat them.

But if there is no transgression in their nation, then let my lord pass them by.

For their lord will defend them and their god will protect them and we shall be put to

shame before the whole world.

Nakioh had finished saying this, all the men standing around the tent began to complain.

Halafrenese's officers and all the men from the sea coast and from Moab insisted that

he must be put to death.

For they said, we will not be afraid of the Israelites.

They are a people with no strength or power for making war.

Therefore let us go up lord Halafrenese and they will be devoured by your vast army.

The Book of Proverbs chapter 16 verses 29 through 33.

A man of violence entices his neighbor and leads him in a way that is not good.

He who winks his eyes, plans perverse things, he who compresses his lips brings evil to pass.

A hori head is the crown of glory, it is gained in a righteous life.

He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty and he who rules his spirit than he

who takes a city.

The lot is cast into the lap, but the decision is holy from the Lord.

Father in heaven we give you praise and glory as always, God's Lord every single day we

praise you and we give you thanks.

Help us to walk in your ways, help us to belong to you, help us to pick up our cross daily

and to follow after you daily to deny ourselves daily and to be yours every single day.

We make this prayer in the name of Jesus.

In the Father's Son, Holy Spirit, and then you guys again, two days in a row, some of these

proverbs are just, well, they're always great, right?

Obviously we say this before, a hori head is the crown of glory, it is gained in a righteous life.

What do you mean?

Well, horfrost is frost that's on the tree, so it's white.

So basically, get gray hair is the crown of glory.

That's what he's saying, a white head or a gray hair is a crown of glory gained in a righteous life.

But here is one.

It's verse 32.

He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty.

Okay, great.

And he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.

Man, that is so good.

Better the person who can rule their own spirit than the one who takes a city.

One of the things we realize is that it's really easy to tell others what to do.

It is really easy to know what they should do.

It is difficult to know what we should do.

It's even more difficult to get ourselves to do that thing.

Man, what a great gift to be able to rule yourself, to be able to lead yourself and

to say, yep, I submit to God's word.

I submit to God's will.

I submit to God's law.

I submit to the law of grace.

Just an incredible, incredible gift to be able to do.

So, okay, Jeremiah 33 and 34, so much goodness in here.

The promise of God, remember that Jeremiah, he's still imprisoned.

He says, the word of the Lord, came to Jeremiah a second time while he was still shut up

in the court of the guard.

And so good.

And what does God say?

He says, call to me and I will answer you.

This is great.

Thus says the Lord, call to me and I will answer you.

Jeremiah, you are in prison for not doing anything wrong.

You simply said what I wanted you to say and now you're in prison, but I want you to

know, call to me and I will answer you.

Again, the context, Jeremiah is in prison.

The city is still under siege.

God hasn't removed the Babylonians.

He hasn't set Jeremiah free, but he's reminding him.

Call to me and I will answer you.

And this is so important for us.

We heard it when it came to Daniel who was praying on behalf of the people and took three

weeks for the angel of the Lord to arrive.

Just because God is quiet, doesn't mean he's absent, right?

If he's silent, doesn't mean he's absent.

If it doesn't seem like he hears, it doesn't mean that he doesn't care.

Here's God speaking to Jeremiah these powerful words.

And also he says, I love this in chapter 33.

And beginning with, say, Rome, verse 9, it says, this city shall be to me a name of joy

after he talks about all the wickedness that's going to have to come upon it.

A lot of dead bodies are going to fill a lot of area.

Verse 10, in this place, which you say to waste without man or beast,

the cities of Judah, streets of Jerusalem that are desolate without man or inhabit

inter-based, there shall be heard again the voice of

mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride,

the voices of those who sing as they bring their thank offerings to the house of the Lord.

And this is so good because God is saying, yep, this place is a waste.

I mean, this place is going to be destroyed.

But, but you're going to hear those sounds, those songs, you're going to hear those things again.

In chapter 33, one more thing just to say, it's so incredible talking about the Messiah.

It says, ah, this is in verse 13, in the cities of Judah,

flocks shall again pass under the hands of the one who counts them.

And I heard someone talk about how the hand of one who counts them is code for Messiah.

And you think about that? Here is the shepherd.

Jesus is the good shepherd, of course.

And the shepherd, he counts, the sheep as they pass by him.

He knows every one of them calls them by name.

He counts them under his hand.

And it's so, so incredible.

Goes on in verse 14, the days are coming.

I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel, the house of Judah.

And it'll be an incredible, incredible time.

And I love this.

It talks about how David will be instituted.

But he says, I will multiply the Levitical priests.

So there'll be an abundance of priests and they will offer a continual sacrifice all of the time.

And you know, it's so interesting.

There's a guy who has written commentaries and he's really smart.

He's so deep in scripture, he knows so much about the Bible.

He got to this and he was saying, you know, I have to admit that I am and perplexed.

I don't know what this means.

I don't know what it means to say that there's an abundance of priests.

And he just, it's so incredibly, he said,

they must mean that God is going to do some kind of priestly work in the age of the Messiah.

I don't know what that is though.

And I'm here, he's not Catholic.

And I'm sitting here thinking, oh my gosh, absolutely.

Here is Jeremiah 33.

Where God promises, he prophesies that no, there will be so many priests.

They will offer up continual sacrifice.

You guys, for the last 2000 years, we've had this new testament, this new covenant priesthood.

And the church has not ceased to offer up sacrifice day after day.

It's incredible.

And just to realize how many has been the abundance of priests.

And here is Jeremiah 33 fulfilled in our day.

Now just one quick note about Jeremiah 34 before we go into Judith.

You're just going to say one thing about Judith too.

But two kicknotes.

Okay.

Did me to fool you.

Two quick notes.

One is Zedekaya prediction.

He's going to be carted off to Babylon.

Now, we might know what this already.

If we remember from second Kings, the end of second Kings,

what's going to happen?

Zedekaya, Nebuchadnezzar is going to come to Jerusalem.

And in front of his very eyes, Zedekaya, his sons will be killed in front of his very eyes.

And then his eyes will be gouged out.

So the last thing he's ever seen are his children being murdered in front of him.

And then he'll be led into Babylon.

And then he will die.

And here Jeremiah says you'll die in peace,

meaning you won't be killed by the sword,

which I guess is a consolation in some ways.

But isn't the greatest thing because Zedekaya was not faithful.

In fact, then Jeremiah gives an example of how unfaithful he is.

This is in chapter 34 verse 8 where Zedekaya,

he made a covenant with all the people in Jerusalem

to proclaim liberty to all the slaves.

So male, female slave, everybody who's been enslaved,

you have to be set free.

Now remember in the law of Moses,

you could have a slave for six years.

And then in the seventh year, they had to be set free.

They had to be.

And this is more like indentured servitude than anything else.

It's not shadow slavery.

I'm like we're familiar with here in the United States

or I guess in modern times.

I heard someone give this example.

They I thought it was really brilliant.

It was the idea that you're in bankruptcy.

You don't have bankruptcy court.

You don't have anywhere else to turn.

It's the idea of you know, you can't pay your restaurant bill.

You can wash them dishes.

Amplified obviously by six years.

But it's that sense of I can't pay my debts.

What can I do?

Well, I'm going to go to work for this person for six years

and I'll be able to pay off my debts that way.

Now at the same time, it was never ever intended

to be for life.

And so God said, here's the deal.

Every seventh year, you set them free, right?

That covenant year, that Shabbat year,

you have to set them free.

But they weren't doing this.

So here comes at a guy who says,

you know, we got to listen to what God has said.

We're going to do what God has asked.

And so they looks like they're repenting.

But this is so interesting.

Two things to keep in mind.

One is, I don't think they're repenting

because the moment Babylon turns away from the gates,

like Babylon had to go off and fight some other battles

and so left Jerusalem, not as much under siege anymore,

the moment they turned away, they thought they were saved.

They took their slaves back.

And you think, oh my gosh, that is unprecedented.

That has never happened in the history of Israel,

where they set a slave free and then took them all back.

Like, going back on their word

and went back on that gift of liberty.

And it's just crazy, which is why God says, okay,

listen, you weren't willing to proclaim liberty.

I will proclaim liberty for you.

Here's the liberty.

I proclaim to you liberty to the sword.

I proclaim liberty to pestilence and to famine.

And this is just so crazy because he says,

you've not obeyed me by proclaiming liberty

to his brother and to his neighbor.

Therefore I proclaim to you liberty.

You have the freedom to die by the sword.

You have the freedom to die by pestilence.

You have freedom to die by famine

because you took back those slaves

and also not only were they not repenting,

but they were, huh, maybe looking out for themselves.

Remember, there's a siege going on

the city of Jerusalem.

And you run out of food.

You run out of materials.

But if you have a slave, you have to feed them.

You have to take care of them.

And so it could very well be that Zidakaya had said,

hey, let's set all the slaves free

so that we don't have to care for them.

So again, far from this being an actual act of repentance,

this could be simply an active deception, deviousness,

and trying to get out of trouble essentially.

But again, it ends in disaster

because at the end of chapter 34, God says,

I'm bringing Babylon back

and they're gonna destroy your city.

Your repentance was not real.

Now, Judith, things are ramping up, right?

We have the people of Israel

and they are being faithful.

In this case, they are saying,

no, we're genuinely going to come before the Lord.

They almost sound like the Ninevites.

Remember when Jonah went to preach to Ninevah,

their repentance, like, hey, pretty soon

God's gonna destroy Ninevah

and everyone put on sackcloth

and covered themselves in ashes

and put them to fast.

No food, no drink.

That is what the people of Israel have done here

as they hear that Ninevaganza King of Assyria,

here in Judith, right?

Of course, is on his way

or a whole offer in his own way.

And they get ready to fight back.

And so they're getting ready to throw down.

We're gonna see what happens.

And in two chapters, we're gonna be introduced,

well, chapter eight, we're gonna be introduced

to this woman named Judith,

who is one of the heroines of the Old Testament.

Anyways, gosh, you guys, here we are.

Taken each step forward, each single day.

I am so grateful for you.

I'm so proud of you.

I am praying for you.

Please, please pray for me.

My name's Father Mike.

I cannot wait to see you tomorrow.

God bless.

You