The Book of Jeremiah

Hebrew Study

Explanation

God turns Jeremiah's own life into a living parable of the judgment. First, he must not marry or have children "in this place," because the children born in Judah would "die of grievous deaths," unburied, "as dung upon the face of the earth." His singleness preached the coming catastrophe: it would be no time to raise a family. Second, he must not enter "the house of mourning" or attend funerals, because "I have taken away my peace from this people... even lovingkindness and mercies." The deaths would be so many and so cursed that normal mourning would cease, no burial, no lament, no "cup of consolation." Third, he must not go to "the house of feasting" to celebrate, because God would soon "cause to cease... the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride." Weddings, funerals, and feasts, the ordinary rhythms of human life, would all fall silent. Jeremiah's strange, solitary existence was itself a sermon: judgment was so near that even the normal joys and griefs of life would be swept away.

Gospel Focus

God asked Jeremiah to give up marriage and family not as a rejection of these good gifts but for the sake of his prophetic calling in a unique hour. This anticipates a New Testament truth: some are called to forgo marriage for the kingdom's sake. Jesus spoke of those who "have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake" (Matthew 19:12), and Paul, himself unmarried, commended singleness for undistracted devotion, "good for the present distress" (1 Corinthians 7:26). Jeremiah's lonely life shows that following God can cost us even good and natural things, and that such sacrifice, when God calls for it, is a form of preaching, a life laid down as a message. Notice too the sobering words, "I have taken away my peace from this people... even lovingkindness and mercies." God's steadfast love and mercy are His to give, and persistent rebellion can forfeit their present experience. But the gospel restores what judgment removed: the "voice of the bridegroom and the bride" silenced here rings out again in Christ, "the bride, the Lamb's wife" (Revelation 21:9), for whom the Bridegroom gave Himself. The joy sin silences, grace restores in the wedding feast of the Lamb.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

God anticipates the people's response. When Jeremiah delivers the message of judgment, they will react with wounded innocence: "Wherefore hath the LORD pronounced all this great evil against us? or what is our iniquity? or what is our sin?" They genuinely cannot see what they have done wrong, which is itself a mark of how blind sin has made them. God's answer is direct. First, the inherited sin: "your fathers have forsaken me... and have walked after other gods." Twice He says "have forsaken me", the repetition underscoring the betrayal. But the present generation is not merely repeating the fathers' sin; they have surpassed it: "ye have done worse than your fathers; for, behold, ye walk every one after the imagination of his evil heart, that they may not hearken." Their sin is a determined refusal to listen. Therefore the sentence: exile "into a land that ye know not," where, ironically, they will get their fill of the idols they craved, "there shall ye serve other gods day and night." The people who wanted other gods would be given a land full of them, and find no favor there. Sin's punishment is often to receive more of what we sinfully desired.

Gospel Focus

The people's question, "what is our iniquity? or what is our sin?", exposes the deepest danger of a hardened heart: it cannot see its own sin. This spiritual blindness is universal apart from grace, "the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not" (2 Corinthians 4:4), and it is why the first work of the Spirit is to "reprove the world of sin" (John 16:8). A person who feels no guilt is not therefore innocent; often they are simply blind. The remedy is not self-examination alone but the light of God's word and Spirit, "search me, O God, and know my heart... and see if there be any wicked way in me" (Psalm 139:23-24). Notice too the justice of the sentence: those who wanted "other gods" were sent to "serve other gods day and night." God sometimes judges sin by giving us more of it, "God gave them over to a reprobate mind" (Romans 1:28). To get what we sinfully crave is not blessing but judgment. Ask God to open your eyes to any sin you cannot see, and do not envy the freedom to sin, for its end is bondage. The gospel gives the opposite of "I will not shew you favour": in Christ we receive grace upon grace.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

In two short verses, God plants a bright seed of hope in the dark soil of judgment. The Exodus from Egypt had been Israel's supreme memory of salvation; every oath, every song, every festival looked back to "the LORD... that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt." But God promises a rescue so great that it will eclipse even that: "it shall no more be said, The LORD liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; But, The LORD liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north." The people who are about to be exiled to the north are promised a homecoming, "I will bring them again into their land that I gave unto their fathers." This is the pattern of God's grace throughout Jeremiah: judgment is never the last word. Even as He pronounces the sentence, He is planning the restoration. The God who scatters is the God who gathers, and the exile that seems the end of hope becomes the setting for a new and greater exodus.

Gospel Focus

The promise of a new exodus that would outshine the first points ultimately to the greatest exodus of all, accomplished by Christ. On the mount of transfiguration, Moses and Elijah spoke with Jesus "of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem" (Luke 9:31), and the word for "decease" is literally "exodus." Jesus' death and resurrection are the true and final Exodus, not out of Egypt or Babylon, but out of the bondage of sin and death, for people of every nation. The return "from the land of the north" was a foretaste; the full reality is the redemption Christ works, gathering His people "from all the lands whither he had driven them," "from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south" (Luke 13:29). This is the heartbeat of the gospel: God's judgments open into a greater salvation. However far you have been "driven," the God who promises to "bring them again" is mighty to gather you home. The new exodus has come in Jesus, who leads His people out of every bondage into the land of promise.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

God declares that His judgment will be thorough and inescapable: "I will send for many fishers... and after... many hunters." As fish are caught in nets and game hunted from every hiding place, "from every mountain... and out of the holes of the rocks," so God will find His people wherever they flee. Nothing escapes Him: "mine eyes are upon all their ways: they are not hid from my face, neither is their iniquity hid from mine eyes." He will "recompense their iniquity... double" for defiling His land with idols. Then Jeremiah breaks into prayer, taking refuge in God: "O LORD, my strength, and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction." And out of that prayer rises one of the chapter's brightest hopes, a vision of the nations turning to God: "the Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit." The very nations that had led Israel into idolatry will one day renounce those idols as worthless inheritances. The chapter ends with God's purpose in it all: "they shall know that my name is The LORD." Judgment and salvation alike aim at this, that the world would know the true and living God.

Gospel Focus

Verse 19 is a stunning gospel promise: "the Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth." Centuries before the Great Commission, God foretold that the nations would abandon their idols, "Surely our fathers have inherited lies," and come to the true God. This is exactly the movement of the gospel, as multitudes "of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues" come to stand before the throne (Revelation 7:9), turning "from idols to serve the living and true God" (1 Thessalonians 1:9). Every convert from a Gentile background is a fulfillment of this word, renouncing the "lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit" of their inherited false worship. And the goal of the whole chapter is stated in the final line: "they shall know that my name is The LORD." This is the aim of both judgment and salvation, that the world would know God. It is fulfilled supremely in Jesus, for the Father's purpose is "that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow... and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord" (Philippians 2:10-11). The "fishers" God sends here are agents of judgment, but the image is redeemed by Christ, who calls His disciples to be "fishers of men" (Matthew 4:19), catching people not for destruction but for salvation. The nations are coming; the name of the LORD, revealed in Jesus, will be known to the ends of the earth.