After twenty-nine chapters of Jeremiah’s speaking of the coming judgment on Jerusalem and Judah, chapters 30 through 34 are not only refreshing, they are surprising. As a unit, they are known as the Book of Consolation. In these chapters, we hear of return and restoration, return from exile and restoration of the nation.
There is something more, something unexpected: the message of return and restoration is not only for Judah but also for Israel—the Northern Kingdom taken into exile over a century before. So we read in 30:4, “These are the words the LORD spoke concerning Israel and Judah.”
The message that the LORD gives to Jeremiah begins with a timeframe that is rather vague: “The days are coming.” All that the reader would know is that Jeremiah is speaking of a future event. How far into the future, one could not know. The exiles were told in Jeremiah’s letter, recorded in chapter 29, that the exile would last seventy years. But what about Israel, the ten lost tribes, as they are sometimes referred to.
The analogy that comes to mind is the difference between resurrection and resuscitation, an issue Paul deals with in I Corinthians 15. For Judah to be returned to the land could be seen as a case of resuscitation. But for Israel to return, well, this would be a case of resurrection. It is the image of resurrection that Ezekiel speaks of in his vision of the Valley of Dry Bones in Ezekiel 37.
Before the return and restoration, two seemingly impossible things must happen. The first is the coming distress on Judah. As we read in 30:6, 7:
6 Ask and see:
Can a man bear children?
Then why do I see every strong man
with his hands on his stomach like a woman in labor,
every face turned deathly pale?7 How awful that day will be!
None will be like it.
It will be a time of trouble for Jacob,
but he will be saved out of it.
Just as it is impossible for a man to bear children, to go into labor, something seemingly impossible will happen to Judah. “How awful that day will be!” Yet, there is hope found in the last line of verse 7, “but he will be saved out of it.”
The second impossibility is found in verses 12-13:
12 “This is what the LORD says:
” ‘Your wound is incurable,
your injury beyond healing.13 There is no one to plead your cause,
no remedy for your sore,
no healing for you.
What we hear of is an incurable wound, an injury beyond healing, a sore without remedy, the impossibility of healing. The metaphor of the incurable wound is used by other prophets. It is an expression of complete and certain death! In the last verse of the book of Nahum, we read:
Nothing can heal your wound;
your injury is fatal.
Everyone who hears the news about you
claps his hands at your fall,
for who has not felt
your endless cruelty?
This was written about Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, and it came to pass!
Yet a few verses after speaking of the impossible, Jeremiah writes that the impossible will happen.
17 But I will restore you to health
and heal your wounds,’
declares the LORD,
‘because you are called an outcast,
Zion for whom no one cares.’
This is the nature of grace. To use the analogy of resurrection and resuscitation, GOD’s grace does not help us along, it does not perform CPR. It takes us where we are, in an incurable situation, one without ANY remedy. And GOD does the impossible, HE saves us!
As Alec Motyer notes in his commentary on Jeremiah:
Yet such is grace: never something that is due or obvious. If it ceases to surprise,
this may remind us), it ceases to be known for what it is.
One last thing: something powerful is also mentioned early in the chapter that we may fail to appreciate.
8 ” ‘In that day,’ declares the LORD Almighty,
‘I will break the yoke off their necks
and will tear off their bonds;
no longer will foreigners enslave them.
9 Instead, they will serve the LORD their God
and David their king,
whom I will raise up for them.
As one writer put it: Liberation in the Biblical view is a change of masters.
The deliverance of GOD’s people will mean no longer will they serve foreigners, but instead they will serve the LORD their GOD and the Messiah (David their king whom I will raise up for them). This seems to be something difficult for some to appreciate, particularly in our time and culture in which liberation and freedom mean something else: the freedom to do as one chooses. I would remind you of what Paul wrote in Romans 6.
18You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
22But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.
It is in Jeremiah 30 that once again we are confronted by the amazing nature of GOD’s grace.
Tags: Jeremiah, sermon notes