The Restoration Of Israel – Jeremiah – Part 4 – Chapter 31 (Part A) – Israel: Loved With Everlasting Love Series

THE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL – JEREMIAH – PART 4 – Chapter 31 (Part A) – ISRAEL: LOVED WITH EVERLASTING LOVE

CHAPTER 31. We come to the most important chapter in Jeremiah for restoration and as this is larger than the others, (33 is also). I will break it into sections and deal with them one by one. All scriptures are from the NASB. Every verse must have meditation applied to it, not some meaningless, casual reading.

{{Jeremiah 31:1 “At that time,” declares the LORD, “I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be MY PEOPLE.” Jer 31:2 Thus says the LORD, “The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness - Israel, when it went to find its rest.” Jer 31:3 The LORD appeared to him from afar, saying, “I HAVE LOVED YOU WITH AN EVERLASTING LOVE. Therefore I have drawn you with loving-kindness. Jer 31:4 Again I will build you, and you shall be rebuilt, O of Israel! Again you shall take up your tambourines, and go forth to the dances of the merrymakers. Jer. 31:5 Again you shall plant vineyards on the hills of Samaria. The planters shall plant and shall enjoy them, Jer 31:6 for there shall be a day when watchmen on the hills of Ephraim shall call out, ‘Arise, and let us go up to Zion, to the LORD our God.’”}}

The passage opens with the key phrase “AT THAT TIME” indicative here of the start of the Millennium, and it is a family relationship that is in view in our verses. Every family that is redeemed will have God at the head, for they are His people, claimed as “My people” in verse 1. Israel must pass through seas of great torment in the Tribulation but God will bring them out on the other side, and at His Second Coming, He claims them as His own – {{Hosea 2:23 “I will sow her for Myself in the land. I will also have compassion on her who had not obtained compassion, and I will say to those who were not My people, ‘YOU ARE MY PEOPLE,’ and they will say, ‘YOU ARE MY GOD.’”}} Today Israel is not “My people” in the Hosea sense, but what a union this will be in the future! They WILL be His people!

VERSE 2. Through the Tribulation Israel will be in the wilderness of sorrow and despair, endeavouring to find its rest; on a journey fraught with the horrors of the world leader/Antichrist who will put many Jews to death in a hateful persecution. They will be terrible times when faith will be strained. However God does not leave His own abandoned; He provides the grace they need. In China today, and some African nations, we see this hateful persecution against Christians, and it gives us some insight into what these Jewish saints will face.

In that passage there is an expression, “found grace in the wilderness” which harkens back to the journey from Egypt when God cared for them, but in the Tribulation, there will be a “wilderness” the Jews will encounter for their own survival, and we look at what Jesus said, set exactly half way through the 7 year Tribulation – {{Matthew 24:16-21 “then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let him who is on the housetop not go down to get the things out that are in his house, and let him who is in the field not turn back to get his cloak, but woe to those who are with child and to those who nurse babes in those days! Pray that your flight may not be in the winter, or on a Sabbath for then there will be a great tribulation such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever shall.”}} When all is done, and the Lord gathers up His own Jewish saints from all over the world, then they enter into their everlasting rest in restored Israel. The land is restored as well.

VERSES 3-4. This is the promise of restoration, but the basis of it is everlasting love, for without it, God would have done away with Israel long ago, but His love is from generation to generation. His kindness to the nation has drawn them in love into His tenderness and great glory. The Lord has come from afar (the distance of time). He will do that when the time is right, and we are fast approaching that with the Rapture on the horizon, and the terrible pain of the valley of Tribulation between the Rapture and Israel's full restoration. Isn’t it wonderful that in verse 4 Israel is called “O virgin of Israel,” as this means the Lord will never remember her sin of spiritual adultery with the gods of the nations, and sees the chosen people as spotless, virginal in their union with God.