Behold, Days Are Coming

Behold, Days Are Coming

Jeremiah 31:27-34

You know, the life of an OT prophet was not an easy life. When a prophet speaks the word of God into the life of a person or persons who have fallen into apostasy through the worship of false gods and have been following the words of false prophets, as Israel and Judah were so prone to do, that prophet would offend a great many people. Sinners prefer to feel good about their sin, and when someone comes along and tells them that what they’re doing is wrong and will cause God’s judgment to fall upon them, well, let’s just say they won’t like it. They REALLY won’t like it.

Well, this has been much of Jeremiah’s prophetic career. He butted heads with most of the rulers of Judah, and the religious leaders, and the so-called prophets of his day. They hated him and did all sorts of bad things to him hoping he’d give up and shut up.

Our text today is found in that part of the book of Jeremiah that many people refer to as the Book of Consolation or the Book or Comfort. Chapters 30 and 31 stand out in the book of Jeremiah because they offer something completely different from what he normally preaches. His usual sermons to the people of Judah dealt with plucking up, breaking down, throwing up, destroying, and afflicting (31:28), in other words, they were sermons of judgment and doom because of their sins against God. But in chapters 30 & 31 we find a message of hope and restoration. This is why he was able to say, Jer 31:26 At this I awoke and looked, and my sleep was pleasant to me.

Apparently, Jeremiah lost a lot of sleep during his ministry. It’s not easy to always be the “Debbie Downer” or the “squeaky wheel” at the party. So, when the Lord gave him a message of hope and restoration, it was pleasant and appealing. He could finally get some peaceful sleep.

I can imagine those restless nights Jeremiah probably experienced. I know that when I get some bad news or maybe had a bad experience that day or was expecting a bad day ahead, I would toss and turn all night with my eyes closed and being fully awake. But the sleepless nights I might experience really wouldn’t hold a candle to what Jeremiah would have experienced.

You see, Assyria had conquered and removed the northern kingdom of Israel around 150 years earlier. At the time that Jeremiah wrote chapters 30 & 31, Babylon had already conquered Judah, and two of the three Babylonian deportations had already occurred. It was during the 2nd Babylonian invasion that the temple and Jerusalem were destroyed. Jeremiah had been prophesying for decades, and he witnessed all of this, but he faithfully continued to warn the people of Judah about the consequences of their disobedience to God.

But like I said, these two chapters deviated from his normal message of judgment and doom to hope and restoration. So, looking at our text today in chapter 31, verses 27-34, we’ll begin with the…

1. Promised Restoration

Jer 31:27 "Behold, days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and with the seed of beast.

Israel was gone. Assyria had taken them away and brought in other conquered people from other lands to take their place. Many of the common, country folk had been left behind, and over the years the apostate faith of Israel melded with the foreign beliefs of the newcomers, creating an amalgamation of true and false. These people would one day be known as the Samaritans.

In Judah, the best and the brightest had been taken to Babylon. Jeremiah had told them not to fight it. This was of God, and they should do what they could to better themselves and build lives in Babylon until the time that God called them back. He wrote to them, Jer 29:28 "…'The exile will be long; build houses and live in them and plant gardens and eat their produce.'"

To the average person, all hope was lost. There had been no Israel for 150 years. Judah has been taken away. All that was left were commoners. No doubt many of them died as Babylon swept through Judah on their way to Jerusalem and the seat of the government, but many remained. To all of those who heard Jeremiah’s message, the idea that both Israel and Judah, would be restored and they would grow and become prosperous would be a difficult thing to believe. All the people who were living at that time, whether left behind in Judah or on their way to Babylon, none of them had any first-hand knowledge of Israel. Everyone who knew anyone from those northern tribes was long gone. All that remained was stories that were told at the supper table, in the markets, or in the now destroyed temple.