THE FIRST PART: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF THE OLD TESTMENT
From Captivity to the Return
Message Four—Jeremiah / Lamentations
Scripture Reading: Jer. 1:1-5; 2:13; 23:3-8; 31:33-34; Lam. 1:1-11, 5:1-7, 16
I. The subject of the book of Jeremiah is Christ being made the righteousness of Jehovah to God’s elect as their center and circumference in God’s dealings with Israel and the nations; no matter how stubborn, wicked, and corrupt Israel, God’s elect, may be, God will eventually make Christ the righteousness of Jehovah to them—Jer. 13. (Life-study of Jeremiah, msg. 1)
II. In the book of Jeremiah four parties are revealed; the first party is God, who is tender, loving, compassionate, and righteous; the second party is Jeremiah, a timid young man raised up by God to be His mouthpiece; in contrast, Israel, the third party, is evil and stubborn, and the fourth party, consisting of the nations, is even worse—31:33-34: (Life-study of Jeremiah, msg. 1)
A. God’s carrying out of His economy through the chastisement of Israel, His elect, in love with His tender care, compassion, and sympathy, and His judgment upon the nations in righteousness to match His love, that Israel may manifest Christ by their being made a new creation with the inner law of the divine life and the capacity of this life to know God—Jer. 31:33-34. (Life-study of Jeremiah, msg. 1)
B. A timid young man raised up by God to be His mouthpiece to speak for Him and express Him; as God’s mouthpiece, Jeremiah is one with God in being tenderhearted, loving, and righteous—Jer. 1:8, 17. (Life-study of Jeremiah, msg. 1)
C. According to the book of Jeremiah, Israel was wicked and provoked God’s wrath, and because of this God came in to punish and chastise them; actually, their unrighteousness and sinfulness provided the opportunity for Christ to come in and be made the righteousness of Jehovah to them—Jer. 13:10. (Life-study of Jeremiah, msg. 2)
D. The basic element of the divine word in Jeremiah is not Israel’s sin and God’s chastisement; the basic element is God’s economy; God’s economy is to make Christ everything, to make Christ the centrality and the universality, for the producing of God’s increase, God’s enlargement, which is the church, and consummation of New Jerusalem. (Life-study of Jeremiah, msg. 2)
III. The kernel of the book of Jeremiah includes three matters—what God wants from us, what we are in our fallen condition, and what Christ is to us; in order to see these three things, we need to “crack” the shell of Jeremiah and concentrate on the kernel inside, which is the complete teaching of the entire Bible—Jer. 2:13, 1 Cor. 12:13: (The Kernel of the Book of Jeremiah, msg. 8)
A. What God wants from us is mentioned mainly in Jeremiah 2:13, which reveals that God is the fountain of living waters: (The Kernel of the Book of Jeremiah, msg. 8)
1. God wants us to take Him as the fountain of living waters for our living; this means that He wants us to take Him as the source, the fountain, of our being; the only way to take God as the fountain of living waters is to drink of Him day by day. (The Kernel of the Book of Jeremiah, msg. 8)
2. God’s intention in His economy is to be the fountain, the source, of living waters to satisfy His chosen people for their enjoyment, with the goal of producing the church as God’s increase, God’s enlargement, to be God’s fullness for His expression—2:13; Lam. 3:22-24; 1 Cor. 1:9. (The Kernel of the Book of Jeremiah, msg. 8)
3. Our drinking of the one Spirit in resurrection makes us members of the Body, builds us up as the Body, and prepares us to be the bride of Christ—1 Cor. 12:13; Rev. 22:17; John 4:14b. (The Kernel of the Book of Jeremiah, msg. 8)
4. John 4:14b reveals a flowing Triune God—the Father is the fountain, the Son is the spring, and the Spirit is the flowing river, issuing in the totality of the eternal life, the New Jerusalem. apart from God Himself dispensed into us as living water, nothing can quench our thirst and make us God’s increase for His expression. (The Kernel of the Book of Jeremiah, msg. 8)
B. Another aspect of the kernel of Jeremiah is the exposure of what we are in our fallen condition—17:9; 13:23; 32:39-40: (The Kernel of the Book of Jeremiah, msg. 8)
1. “The heart is deceitful above all things / And it is incurable; / Who can know it?”—17:9.
2. “Can the Cushite change his skin, / Or the leopard his spots? / Then you also may be able to do good, / Who are accustomed to do evil”—13:23.
3. As fallen human beings, in ourselves and by ourselves and with ourselves we are incurable and unchangeable—32:39-40; Rom. 7:18; Matt. 12:34-35; 15:7-11, 18-20; 1 Chron. 28:9; Ezek. 36:26-27. (The Kernel of the Book of Jeremiah, msg. 8)
C. The third matter in the book of Jeremiah is what Christ is to us—23:5-6; 31:33-34: (The Kernel of the Book of Jeremiah, msg. 8)
1. “Indeed, days are coming, / Declares Jehovah, / When I will raise up to David a righteous Shoot… / And this is His name by which He will be called, / Jehovah our righteousness”—23:5-6:
a. Jehovah our righteousness refers to Christ in His divinity, and a righteous Shoot, to Christ in His humanity. (The Kernel of the Book of Jeremiah, msg. 8)
b. The name here, Jehovah our righteousness, indicates that Christ, as a descendant of David, is not merely a man but is also the very Jehovah who created the heavens and the earth, selected Abraham, established the race of Israel, and was the Lord of David, the One whom he called Lord; Christ came as a Shoot (the son of David) who is Jehovah Himself (as the Lord of David) to be the righteousness of God’s people—Matt. 22:42-45; Rev. 5:5; 22:16. (The Kernel of the Book of Jeremiah, msg. 8)
2. “This is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares Jehovah: I will put My law in their inward parts and write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be My people. and they will no longer teach, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, Know Jehovah; for all of them will know Me, from the little one among them even to the great one among them, declares Jehovah, for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more”—31:33-34; Isa. 42:6:
a. The center, the content, and the reality of the new covenant is the inner law of life; in its essence this law refers to the divine life, and the divine life is the Triune God, who is embodied in the all-inclusive Christ and realized as the life-giving Spirit and who has been processed and consummated to be everything to His chosen people—Rom. 8:2; Col. 2:9; 1 Cor. 15:45. (The Kernel of the Book of Jeremiah, msg. 8)
b. The writing of the law of life on our heart corresponds to the New Testament teaching concerning the spreading of the divine life from the center of our being, which is our spirit, to the circumference, which is our heart; God writes His law on our heart by moving from our spirit into our heart to inscribe what He is into our being—Heb. 8:10; Rom. 8:9; Eph. 3:17; 2 Cor. 3:3. (The Kernel of the Book of Jeremiah, msg. 8)
IV. Lamentations, written by Jeremiah, the weeping and lamenting prophet, contains five lamentations expressing Jeremiah’s sorrow and love—Lam. 2:11; 9:1; 3:48: (Life-study of Lamentation, msg. 1)
A. Lamentations 3:22 says, “It is Jehovah’s lovingkindness that we are not consumed, / For His compassions do not fail;” here Jeremiah speaks not of God’s love but of His lovingkindness and of His compassions, compassion is different from mercy, compassion is a tender, inward feeling, and mercy is the outward expression of this feeling; Jehovah’s compassions, like the dew, are new every morning. (Life-study of Lamentation, msg. 1)
B. Prior to 5:19, Jeremiah was writing according to his personal, human feeling, but in this verse he leaps out of his human feeling into God—5:19. (Life-study of Lamentation, msg. 4)
C. Jeremiah speaks to Jehovah a challenging word, even a commanding and reproving word, however, Jehovah did not answer him but remained silent, all Jeremiah’s challenges and questions are answered in the following books of the Bible; the consummation of this answer will be the New Jerusalem, hence, Jeremiah must wait until the New Testament age, until the age of the millennial kingdom, and until the New Jerusalem, then he will be fully satisfied—5:20-22. (Holy Bible Recovery Version, Lam. 5:22-23, footnotes)