Today, I am reading and commenting on  Jeremiah 31-32.

Jeremiah had repeatedly prophesied that disaster would come upon Jerusalem and vehemently rejected as false prophets those who gave the people of Jerusalem cheery prophecies.  However, in today’s passage. Jeremiah does give a prophecy of hope.  He does not offer them a chance to avoid the disaster which he had previously prophesied, but he prophesies that the disaster will not be the end for the people of Israel.  God promised that He would call them back to Him.  He would establish a new covenant with His people.  Under His new covenant, people would be held accountable only for their own sins, not for the sins of their parents and other ancestors.  More importantly, God promised that He would put His law and instructions into the hearts and minds of those who turned to Him under this new covenant.  If we repent and seek God, He will directly teach us His laws and we will not need to rely on anyone else to know them, or to know Him.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Jeremiah 31-32.

Jeremiah tells us that God will make a new covenant with Israel because the people of Israel had demonstrated that humans were not capable of following God’s original covenant.  So, God promised through Jeremiah to create a new covenant, one which I believe was created by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Under the new covenant, God put His Spirit within us to give us God’s instructions and write them upon our hearts.  I believe that under this new covenant we do not need teachers in order to learn what God wants us to do.  Nevertheless, God has provided us with teachers to help us master His will.  A key part of what Jeremiah says here about not needing teachers is that there are no secrets which only the “select” can know: all of God’s truth is freely available to all who wish to know.

On another lesson of importance for us, despite prophesying the fall of Jerusalem, Jeremiah also prophesied its restoration.  But Jeremiah did not just say that these future good things would happen, he acted upon them.  When given the opportunity, Jeremiah bought land outside of the city.  However, he made it clear that he did not expect to make any gain from it in the short-term by putting the deed in a clay jar to preserve it for a long time.  Jeremiah had faith that the deed would someday be worth something and acted on that faith.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Jeremiah 31-32.

Through Jeremiah God promises to enter into a new covenant with the people of Israel (from other passages, both in Jeremiah and elsewhere, we learn that this covenant extends to all people).  This new covenant was necessary because the people of Israel were unable to keep the original one (no one would have been able to do so).  The new covenant which God made does not require teachers who have been extensively trained to understand what God commands and how those rules fit together.  God has provided simple and basic rules which anyone can understand for themselves if they so desire.  Further, He has placed His Spirit in those who wish to follow this new covenant to explain to them from within what He desires.  This does not mean that there is no place for teachers of God’s will.  It means that you can go to Scripture for yourself, and with the aid of the Holy Spirit, determine if what the teacher is teaching matches what God has said through Scripture.  

On a slightly different note, Jeremiah was accused of being a traitor to his people because he prophesied that Jerusalem would fall and that the people of Judah should submit to the Babylonians.  This accusation was wrong on several counts.  First, Jeremiah also prophesied that Babylon would be destroyed for what it did to the people of Israel (including Judah).  Second, we have today’s passage where Jeremiah demonstrated his belief that the nation of Israel would one day be restored.  Jeremiah purchased land from a relative and sealed the deed and other ownership documents in a clay jar to preserve them against the time when the Jewish people would once more be able to buy and sell land in the Land of Israel.  He had told the people of Jerusalem that they would go into exile, but he had also told them it would only be for 70 years.  In today’s passage, he put his money where his mouth was by buying land.