Lessons From Jeremiah – Part 12 – The Treacherous Nation Will Repent And Be Gloriously Restored Series

LESSONS FROM JEREMIAH – PART 12 – THE TREACHEROUS NATION WILL REPENT AND BE GLORIOUSLY RESTORED

PART 12 - Jeremiah 3:19-25

CHAPTER 3

Today we continue with the remainder of Chapter 3 and look at different aspects in this whole story of Judah’s pitiful state in her rejection of God and her adoption of all the foreign gods. God created the trees and the stones but these Jews worshipped idols of wood and stone as their creator.

[A]. GOD’S GREAT DESIRE WAS SLAPPED DOWN BY JUDAH’S TREACHERY

{{Jeremiah 3:19-20 Then I said, ‘How I would set you among My sons, and give you A PLEASANT LAND, the MOST BEAUTIFUL INHERITANCE OF THE NATIONS,’ and I said, ‘You shall call Me, My Father, and not turn away from following Me.’ Surely, as a woman TREACHEROUSLY DEPARTS from her lover, so you have dealt treacherously with Me, O house of Israel,” declares the LORD.”}}

We now come to one of those prophetic jumps – verse 18 and 19 - taking us from the setting in the Millennium right back to Jeremiah’s own time as God reveals His great desire. These frequent jumps in the writings of the prophets can cover two and a half thousand years, and in Joel, the oldest of the prophets, it covers 2 700 years. Often there is no warning, just the next phrase or the next verse. This is where it is essential to have knowledge of the prophetic outline beginning at the Rapture right through to the new heavens and new earth of Revelation 20. When you know the order of events then you can slot in these time jumps in the prophets fairly well.

God will never force His desire for His chosen people, onto His people, and He wants it to be accepted joyfully and willingly, as a bountiful gift for a people He loves. All His blessings for Israel and for us as the Church, are wonderful, gifts from the heavenly Father. {{James 1:17 “Every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation, or shifting shadow.”}}

Verse 19 begins with, “HOW I WOULD set you among the nations . . .” and that is the heart of God yearning over His sinful, idolatrous people in Judah. It is a desire we can not comprehend for the depth of God is infinite. I think it is the same deep desire that is behind these words in John 3:16 “For God SO LOVED the world . . .” The Holy Spirit is God in the Trinity, and think about these words and try to understand them – {{Romans 8:26-27 “In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness for we do not know how to pray as we should, but THE SPIRIT HIMSELF INTERCEDES FOR US WITH GROANINGS TOO DEEP FOR WORDS, and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”}}

However the LORD will force His desire on His enemies, certain unquestioned judgement because of their sin. God shares His desire for the nation in verse 19, revealing inheritance and relationship. He wanted to set Jacob’s people as the chief nation among all the others with their land being pleasant and beautiful. All Israel's blessings are in the land, and the land was to overflow with fullness and productivity as God put His mark upon it.

However there is a principle at work that can not change. God will not add blessings to sin. For example we can not cheat in business and ask God to bless that business. He will not overlook rebellion, stubbornness and idolatry or selfish motives. The people forfeited their right to the blessings of the land. The LORD loves His earthly people but when the nation departed terribly from God, they lost all right to God’s blessings. God could do no more, because the nation rebelled and rejected their Source of life.

God’s desire for them, though, has not changed, and He will bring about those desires to fruition through trial and suffering as His people are refined in the Great Tribulation, and then we shall see the fullness of God’s unrestricted blessings. The prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah write much about that and the great blessing ahead for Israel.

The second part of the LORD’s desire in verse 19 is relationship and that aspect is so very real to God. Adam was created so that He might have fellowship with God, with a relationship that in some way I can’t explain, but gave joy to God; and for Adam, he would know a sinless communion and connection with a God who shared with Him.

How unknowable (for us) and sublime, must have been those times of communion in the garden in the cool of the evening. In Eden you had the relationship of Creator with His created being. When it comes to Israel you have a different relationship for it is a Father-son relationship, both nationally and individually, in addition to the national one of Husband-wife; Jehovah-Israel.