Call to Commitment

 

Chapter 31:21-40

 

The highway of return

      21.  "Set up signposts, Make landmarks; Set your heart toward the highway, The way in which you went. Turn back, O virgin of Israel, Turn back to these your cities. 

      22.  How long will you gad about, O you backsliding daughter? For the LORD has created a new thing in the earth—A woman shall encompass a man." 

    
23.  Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: "They shall again use this speech in the land of Judah and in its cities, when I bring back their captivity: 'The LORD bless you, O home of justice, and mountain of holiness!' 

 24.  And there shall dwell in Judah itself, and in all its cities together, farmers and those going out with flocks. 

 25.  For I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul." 

       26.  After this I awoke and looked around, and my sleep was sweet to me. 

From the old ways of rebellion and enmity with their God, Israel looks forward to new times and a new relationship with Him. It begins with a return from 70 years in Babylon, but that is an immediate and partial restoration. By a study of Ezra and Nehemiah, as well as some of the latter prophets, we can see that there was no full-heart repentance and newness of life at that time. The prophecies sometimes have dual fulfillment and the final and perfect completion will take place in the end of time.

 This chapter is about new beginnings in the Promised Land. The preparation for this time will begin in the heart of Israel… set your heart… where a longing to return from within will motivate them. God challenges them to remember the way by which they came to Babylon. It is not simply a geographical consideration, but a call to deeply examine the sins that brought them so far from their homeland and their God. They were to remember the signposts and the landmarks, as they were driven along this way; and they were to observe them, as they returned. Let two graces rise from within at every juncture: 1) Profound remorse for the rebellion that caused the loss and 2) extreme gratitude to the Lord, Who planned and supervised their return.

 God’s remedy gives total restoration and, as stated in the last article concerning verse 4, He gives back Israel’s virginity. That requires miraculous transformation. The sinner is returned to a state of perfect righteousness, his sins are tossed behind the Lord’s back (Is.38:17), and fall into the deepest sea (Mic.7:19). Israel can once again live in his former cities (1).

 With all these possibilities before her, He chides her for lingering in her present state… He Who saw her restored position as the virgin of Israel, sees her actual position as a backsliding daughter. Commentators have problems with the following statement: a woman shall encompass a men (22), about which the Lord said that He “has created a new thing on the earth”. Some simply saw a defenseless Israel, withstanding its stronger enemies. One tells me that the Jews see in it a promise of the coming Messiah. The church fathers, such as Augustine, almost unanimously understood that this statement referred to the Virgin Mary and the unprecedented miraculous conception, speaking of a new creation. 

 

 Perhaps both views are correct, showing Israel standing fast against all its enemies, until its Messiah would come to them in a supernatural manner. Considering the context of this chapter, this could well be a Messianic text. Through the Messiah would come the New Covenant of verses 31 through 34, and when He returns to reign from Mount Sion, Israel would become a home of justice, and mountain of holiness (23).  This renewed saying, surely speaks of an Israel restored to its earlier position, even elevated to a higher place than ever before.  

 Verse 24, prophesies of material prosperity among the citizens of the cities and the agricultural farmers and herders of the Judean territory. More importantly, verse 25 speaks of an abundant spiritual renewal, God promising something that satiates and replenishes within the soul. Jeremiah received this revelation in a dream and awoke with a pleasant effect upon his own soul (26).

 

God’s work will prevail

 27.  "Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and the seed of beast. 

 28.  And it shall come to pass, that as I have watched over them to pluck up, to break down, to throw down, to destroy, and to afflict, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the LORD. 

 29.  In those days they shall say no more: 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, And the children's teeth are set on edge.' 

 30.  But every one shall die for his own iniquity; every man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. 

 The Lord portrays Himself as a Farmer, sowing the land of Israel, not only with grain, but with the seeds of man and beast, replenishing the population with people, along with their flocks and herds (27). Jesus taught His disciples that His time in Samaria was to do the work of a harvester. “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work” (Jn.4:34). The completion of the Father’s work was the harvest: “Lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest!” (Jn.4:35).

 “I sent you to reap…” Jesus instructed His followers to enter heaven’s labors that God had purposed before the foundation of the earth, and which He was revealing since the beginning of time. The Old Testament saints “have labored, and you have entered into their labors” (Jn.4:38). Jesus was reaping in Sychar, the Old Testament Shechem, so rich with history, the Lord God having sowed the territory with heavenly seed. Therefore, Jesus needed to go through Samaria (Jn.4:4) and reap.

 The apostle Paul wrote to Timothy of gospel labor. He gave it various allegories. 1) First, he must be untangled from all the affairs of life and dedicate himself as a soldier at war. 2) He must compete according to the rules as an athlete in track and field. 3) But more meaningfully still, he is to be a hardworking farmer, who is personally involved in partaking in the harvest. The entire seasonal process in the field, beginning with plowing, then planting and cultivating, points to the harvest. All is lost and in vain, if there is no harvest. All that the Lord has invested in Israel, must surely fulfill His purpose. As one friend stated in a sermon, “God has too much invested in me to quit now.” He will finish, all that He begins.

God’s labor in Israel involved a great deal of cultivating, plucking out the weeds. Throughout their history, He was breaking, throwing down, destroying and afflicting, but He could not ultimately ruin, what He had prepared and planted. God, because He is God, does nothing in vain; He must finish what He started. In Jeremiah’s prophecy, the time has come to speak of the Lord’s faithfulness in completing His purpose for Israel (28).

 Isn’t the same principle true towards the salvation of souls? “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 T.1:15). With the cross foremost in His thoughts, “He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem” (Lk.9:51). He endured the injustice of a mock trail, suffered the inconceivable pain of the cross, both in body and soul, and cried, “It is finished!" He paid the debt of our sins to the last penny and went down to the tomb. But the grave could not hold Him. S. M. Lockridge said it so well: “He got up with every form of power in the orbit of His omnipotence!”  But Paul said it better: “The exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead” (Eph.1:19,20).

 There was a proverb in Israel, which illustrated the injustice in their day, which remains true in this present age: “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge” (29). As the Kingdom of God is manifested, this saying will no longer be applicable. The reign of Christ is governed by total righteousness, when absolute justice will prevail (30). God is faithful to right the wrongs.

 

 A new creation

31.  "Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 

 32.  not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD. 

 33.  But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 

 34.  No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more." 

 35.  Thus says the LORD, Who gives the sun for a light by day, The ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night, Who disturbs the sea, And its waves roar (The LORD of hosts is His name): 

 36.  "If those ordinances depart From before Me, says the LORD, Then the seed of Israel shall also cease From being a nation before Me forever." 

 37.  Thus says the LORD: "If heaven above can be measured, And the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel For all that they have done, says the LORD. 

 38.  "Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, that the city shall be built for the LORD—from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate. 

 39.  The surveyor's line shall again extend straight forward over the hill Gareb; then it shall turn toward Goath. 

 40.  And the whole valley of the dead bodies and of the ashes, and all the fields as far as the Brook Kidron, to the corner of the Horse Gate toward the east, shall be holy to the LORD. It shall not be plucked up or thrown down anymore forever." 

 Now we learn about the Scriptural promise in verse 22: The LORD has created a new thing in the earth. It reaches to depths that go beyond restoration, but actually brings mankind into a new creation. The writer of Hebrews quotes this passage and concludes that when God speaks of a New Covenant, “He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” (He.8:13). We are learning of a new covenant in a new creation. Is there a more astounding prophecy in the entire Old Testament?

 Paul speaks of two creations, beginning in 1 Corinthians 15:45, continuing through verse 49, and refers to Christ as the second Man. In verse 47 he states, “The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven.” The person, who is born again through the God/Man, is born from above and is no mere man, but a supernatural being with citizenship in the heavenly Jerusalem. There is much to say about this new creation, but we must get back to the New Covenant, beginning in verse 31.

 We, first of all, must firmly establish that this is a promise, given to Jeremiah’s people, with the house of Judah and with the house of Israel (31). Paul claims that the gospel of Christ, is “for the Jew first and also for the Greek” (Ro.1:16). The prophecy concerns the gospel of Christ and speaks to the divided kingdoms, the northern kingdom, maintaining the name, Israel, and the southern is called Judah.

 In this 21^st Century, some Christians have adopted a doctrine from the Reformation called replacement or supersessionism. I believe that this belief is rooted in antisemitism and should be earnestly avoided. These people believe in their doctrine, in spite of the clear teaching of Paul in Romans 9-11. Two giants in the faith, Charles Spurgeon and J. C. Ryle, insisted that God must fulfill His promises to the Jewish nation, because that is what the Bible clearly teaches. To veer from literal interpretation is extremely dangerous; it is the mistake that the cults have made. Spurgeon declared, "The first sense of the passage must never be drowned in the outflow of your imagination.” Ryle agreed: “Under the mistaken system of spiritualizing and accommodating Bible language, Christians have too often completely missed its meaning.”  We already have studied some of the promises to the Jew in this book of Jeremiah.

  Let us briefly cover Paul’s teaching. First, he maintained that in rejecting and crucifying their Messiah, the Jews stumbled. Then he asks, “Have they stumbled that they should fall?” and answers: “Certainly not!” (Ro.11:11). Their was a reason for their stumbling: “Their being cast away is the reconciling of the world” (Ro.11:15). Paul called the Jews the natural branches of God’s olive tree (Ro.11:21). The non-Jews, “being a wild olive tree, were grafted in among them” (Ro.11:17). Paul interpreted literally Isaiah 59:20: “The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob” and the result will be that “all Israel shall be saved” (Ro.11:26). The prophecy is based on the very nature of God: “The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Ro.11:29). We, the non-Jewish people, were strangers to God’s promises: “You were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph.2:12). The gospel has grafted us in.

 The first covenant with Israel was made under Mount Sinai after the Lord, in loving kindness, took them by the hand and freed them from Egyptian slavery. He was a husband to them, but they broke the “marriage” covenant (32). For all their unfaithfulness, God did not utterly reject them. Instead, He made a new covenant, and this is the covenant, to which we have been grafted in. It is the gospel covenant, to the Jew first, but also to the Greek (gentile). It is what Israel always lacked from the beginning. Moses observed that, even though the second generation of those that escaped slavery in Egypt, were eye witnesses of God’s mighty acts, they were not capable of living faithfully before Him: “The Lord has not given you a heart to perceive and eyes to see and ears to hear, to this very day” (Dt.29:4).

 Therefore, He is giving them this transformative covenant, skillfully created in the heart of man. It recreates the mind, so that the law of God becomes the new man’s natural way of thinking. Then, it plants within a pliable heart of flesh, to motivate him from the depths of his inner being. The Holy Spirit writes His stories upon the heart of man: “Written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart” (2 Co.3:3). Think of the vast improvement of a transformation of nature, over any kind of outward teaching or effort, even if it were done with the finger of God.  Their hearts and minds would be compatible with the Lord’s, so that a new relationship can begin, in which, as He assures, I will be their God and they shall be My People (33).

 Also, the spirit of man will be sensitive to the Spirit of God, in a far more effective way, than what any university or professor could achieve. See how the apostle John describes it: “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things… but the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him” (1 Jn.2:20, 27). There is no substitute for the anointing, which alone can teach man the ways of God from within his being. Human teaching is not rejected, but simply insufficient to penetrate and instruct the inner man. The individual has met the Lord in the new birth and he knows Him to be his God.

 In order for the relationship to take place and develop, something much be done about man’s awful sinful condition before an infinitely holy God. I know of no better part of Scripture which emphasizes this divine principle more clearly than 1 Peter 3:18: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” There it is! On the cross, Christ removed the sin question, the barrier that separated us from God, and opened the door of heaven into the inner chamber, the Holy of Holies, in order that mankind might have fellowship with God (34).

 It is all a creative work, just as surely as in Genesis 1, when God created the sun, moon and stars for lights in the heavens, by day and by night. He ordains their paths and mightily disturbs the sea and its roaring waves. His army not only defends or defeats the opposition of men, but enforces the laws of the universe (35). Even in this 21^st Century, there is not a telescope that can discover its boundaries, in order to measure the universe. No one knows, what is at Earth’s center or has gone into the depths of the sea.

 The Lord of hosts… What a challenge for His followers to know Him by this name! Would you please notice how the very nature and character of God is involved in the security of Israel (May the supercessionist see it!)? Only if God can be found unfaithful or limited in the measurement or the ordinances of His creation, only then will He abandon Israel or erase them forever as a nation. He has promised to not cast them off, in spite of all the evil that they have done (36, 37)!

 Jerusalem will be constructed for the King of kings and Lord of lords and will extend beyond its former borders. John sees Him at the door of heaven, ready to descend and take His place on earth (Rev.19:11-15, 20)! The armies in heaven follow Him, as the Word of God with a sword proceeding from His mouth, is ready to smite the nations and toss the beast and his false prophet into the lake of fire, burning with brimstone (38, 39). Then Jeremiah describes the results of the Battle of Armageddon and the preparation of Jerusalem as the Holy City. The Lord will reign from Mount Zion (40). It shall not be plucked up or thrown down anymore forever or in Daniel’s words to Nebuchadnezzar: “The God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed” (Dn.2:44) or as he proclaimed after his climactic night vision: “Behold, One like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven! He came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him. Then to Him was given dominion and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom the one which shall not be destroyed” (Dn.7:13,14).