Learning from Jeremiah 26-31

26:1-24 - ‘He has spoken to us in the Name of the Lord our God’ (16). Jeremiah was a true servant of the Lord. We need people like him today. He was faithful. He was unashamed of his Lord. He was unafraid to speak up for his Lord. We see this same faithfulness in Christ’s apostles: ‘Day after day, in the temple and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and preaching the Good News that Jesus is the Christ’ (Acts 5:42). We could do with people like that today, people who are enthusiastic about sharing the Gospel, people who are eager to win others for Christ. We can be people like that. God can make us like that - if we let Him! As you hear the Word of the Lord in Church, as you read His Word in your own home, pray that God will give you the strength to share with others the Word He has given to you.

27:1-22 - ‘They will be taken to Babylon and there they will remain until the day I come for them. Then I will bring them and restore them to this place’ (22). God had a great purpose for His people - but they had to wait for His time. God has a great purpose for us. Christ is preparing a great ‘place’ for us: ‘In My Father’s House are many mansions... I am going there to prepare a place for you’. Christ has promised that He will return to take us to that great ‘place’: ‘I will come again and will take you to Myself, that where I am you may be also’ (John 14:2-3). Christ is coming. We must wait for Him. We must be patient. We must wait for His time, the time of His Coming, the Day when He comes for us. The Lord has not forgotten His promise. He will come ‘to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him’ (Hebrews 9:28).

28:1-17 - ‘Listen, Hananiah, the Lord has not sent you, and you have made this people trust in a lie’ (15). What a difference there is between those who wait on the Lord for His strength and those who rush ahead in their own strength! The Word of God warns us against trying to serve God in our own strength: ‘Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted’. If we are to be true servants of the Lord, we must learn to wait upon the Lord and receive His strength: ‘Those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength’. What a difference the strength of the Lord makes - ‘They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint’ (Isaiah 40:30-31)! Let us exchange our weakness for God’s strength - then we will truly be ‘sent’ by the Lord and will speak His truth.

29:1-32 - ‘I know the plans I have for you... to give you a future and a hope’. This was God’s long-term purpose for His people. It was important that they did not lose sight of this. There would be ‘seventy years’ of captivity in Babylon (10-11). At times, they must have wondered, ‘Will this ever end? Is there really something better still to come?’. Our life on earth may sometimes seem like the ‘seventy years’ in Babylon: ‘The length of our days is seventy years... yet all they bring us is trouble and sorrow’! We wonder, ‘Is there a glorious future still to come?’. In our times of ‘suffering’ and ‘sorrow’, we draw our ‘strength’ from God’s Word. We look forward to ‘the Day’ when Christ ‘comes to be glorified in His holy people and to be admired in all who believe’ (Psalms 90:10; 119:28; 2 Thessalonians 1:4-5,10).

30:1-24 - ‘I am with you to save you’. This was God’s Word to His people. Their ‘captivity’ in Babylon would not last forever. God had given His promise: ‘I will restore the fortunes of My people... I will bring them back to the land which I gave to their fathers’ (10-11,3). ‘I am with you to save you’. This is still God’s Word to us. Our ‘captivity’ will not last forever. Christ has died to ‘free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death’. We look beyond our earthly life. We see our glorious future. ‘Death’ will be ‘swallowed up in victory’. ‘Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ’. Let us ‘be steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord, our labour is not in vain’ (Hebrews 2:14-15; 1 Corinthians 15:54,57-58).

31:1-20 - ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness’ (3). So often, we have been like ‘the prodigal son’ (Luke 15:11-24). We have walked away from our Father’s House. We have wandered off into ‘the far country’. We feel that we are far from God, yet still He draws near to us. The Lord is at work in our hearts. He is bringing us ‘to our senses’. He is reminding us of His love. He is drawing us back to Himself. In love, He is calling us home again. He is speaking to our hearts. He is saying to us, ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love’. As His love reaches our hearts, ‘the prodigal son’ becomes ‘the returning son’: ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son’. ‘Bring me back, let me come back, for you are the Lord my God!’ (18).

31:21-40 - ‘Set up road signs; put up guideposts. Take note of the highway, the road that you take’ (21). It’s so easy to take a wrong turning. You lose your sense of direction. You get confused. You’re not sure which way to go. You are lost. You are getting more and more lost all the time. You can’t find your way back home again. You need someone who knows the way to come and be your guide. Is there someone who can get us on the right road again? Is there someone who can guide us safely home? Yes! Jesus is ‘the Way, the True Way, the Living Way’. ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. That’s what Jesus said. Without the Way, there is no going, Without the Truth, there is no knowing. Without the Life, there is no living’ (John 14:6; Junior Praise, 89). Let Jesus be your Guide. Let Him be your Saviour.