Restored

Jeremiah 30

Main Idea: God can restore us in our darkest desperation.

1. Introduction: God Tells Jeremiah to Write a Book (30:1-3).
   1. God Defends the Defenseless (30:12-17).
   2. God Restores (30:18-22).
   3. God Brings Justice (30:23-24).

In chapter 30 everything changes. After the hard passages of the first half of the book, now comes hope and redemption. The entire tenor of the book changes—from dark prophecy and hard judgment to hope. The impression of the following passages is the hug a parent gives a child after severe discipline. Christopher Wright observes the shocking nature of this transition and how it relates to the prophecies that have already been spoken:

The Message of Jeremiah:

• 30:8 echoes the prediction of Hananiah in 28:4, 11. Hananiah got the timing wrong, but even though Jeremiah predicted an iron yoke (unbreakable by any human force), God would ultimately break the yoke of Israel’s oppressors.
• 30:9 reverses the ending of the line of Davidic kings in 22:30, promising a new David (as also in 23:5-6, repeated in 33:15-16).
• 30:11 answers the hope and prayer of 10:24, that God would discipline but not completely destroy.
• 30:12-17 answers the cry of the wounded at 8:22 and 15:18, while 30:17 answers the question at 15:5.
• 30:18 promises a rebuilding that reverses 9:19, while 30:19-20 reverses the depopulation of 9:21-22 and 10:20.
• 31:3-4 answers the nostalgic, bittersweet honeymoon memory of Yahweh in 2:2 with the promise of a fresh wooing of his bride (‘you’ is feminine singular).
• 31:6 answers the forlorn question at 8:19 and 14:19, as to whether the Lord would be present in Zion.
• 31:8 transforms the land of the north from a source of impending invasion (1:14-15, etc.) into the source of coming restoration.
• 31:9 anticipates people praying to the God who now listens, who had earlier refused to do so in 11:14.
• 31:12-13 transforms the ending of all social joy in 16:9 into a new celebration.
• 31:18-19 answers at last God’s own question in 8:4-7 as to why his people never turn to him in repentance, with the promise that they will.
• 31:31-34 promises a new covenant that will transcend the broken one of 11:1-8. (Wright, Message of Jeremiah, 301–2)

It is clear that Jeremiah 30 and 31 are the oasis in the arid judgment of the first 29 chapters. They provide the hope that is needed and the promise of a better future. Jeremiah 30 reminds us of Psalm 30:1-5:

I will exalt you, Lord, because you have lifted me up

and have not allowed my enemies to triumph over me.

Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you healed me.

Lord, you brought me up from Sheol;

you spared me from among those going down to the Pit.

Sing to the Lord, you his faithful ones,

and praise his holy name.

For his anger lasts only a moment,

but his favor, a lifetime.

Weeping may stay overnight,

but there is joy in the morning.

It also calls to mind Psalm 103:8-10:

The Lord is compassionate and gracious,

slow to anger and abounding in faithful love.

He will not always accuse us or be angry forever.

He has not dealt with us as our sins deserve

or repaid us according to our iniquities.

However, as we will see, this renewed hope is not the next thing on the horizon. There will be judgment before the hope. Just as in the previous chapter, the hope and future will come after the judgment.

Introduction: God Tells Jeremiah to Write a Book

Jeremiah 30:1-3

Jeremiah is told to write a book. So after all the judgment God has communicated through his prophet, now God wants the hope documented. Jeremiah 31–33 contains the content of the book Jeremiah was told to write. It is a book of encouragement and hope. He is writing to explain how their fortunes would be restored and how they would possesses the land.

While we have mentioned this before, it is encouraging to turn to the books of Ezra and Nehemiah to see how this restoration played out. They really did find what God promised. The contents of Jeremiah become a reality in the restored Jerusalem that God brings.

God Defends the Defenseless

Jeremiah 30:12-17

These verses are typical of the type of word pictures Jeremiah likes to use. Jeremiah describes the situation with three metaphors. First, he is suggesting they are so bad they are sick patients with a terminal disease. I have often wondered when people had cancer two hundred years ago what they thought. No remedy, no cure, and no hope. Or perhaps even today it is like that in a majority-world country where there is disease with no cure.

Second, they are also like a defendant with no lawyer. This is another tragic metaphor. There are those who need justice, but justice will not be served because they have no one to defend them. They are at the mercy of the court.

Finally, the nation is like an abandoned lover. No one will come to their rescue. They have plenty of lovers but none who will come to their aid. They are a pariah because God’s judgment is on them.

Then there is a reversal of fate. God takes all of their enemies, plunders them, and sends them into exile. Then, in one of the most beautiful verses in the book, God says,

But I will bring you health

and will heal you of your wounds—

this is the Lord’s declaration—

for they call you Outcast,

Zion whom no one cares about. (30:17)

There is no one to heal their wounds so God becomes their healer.

If there was ever a passage that so exquisitely sets up New Testament theology, it is Jeremiah 30. We are people who are diseased with sin (Rom 6:23), we are people who have no one to stand in our defense (Rom 8:31-39), and we are people who are without hope in the world (Eph 2:1).

Yet God, after our many rebellions, treats us in salvation in the same way he treated Judah. Because of Christ, we are healed from the disease of sin. Because of Christ, we have him to stand in our defense. Because of Christ, we have hope that we are actually a part of the bride of Christ and forever wed to him.

The desperation of my situation was not fake; it was real. Without Christ I was genuinely destitute. Yet the power of the gospel is stronger than my plight. My life with Christ is the light that overcomes the darkness that was my life without Christ.

This gospel-centric way of reading Jeremiah is not forced, as the next section demonstrates.

God Restores

Jeremiah 30:18-22

The picture of restoration in this section is rich and encouraging. Notice the language of completeness: “every city . . . every citadel.” With all that God has taken away, he will also give. This is not a temporary restoration; this is a complete restoration. Yet we know how this ends: God does allow the city to be rebuilt under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah. The exiles do return. There is a future and a hope. But then the city is once again given to Roman occupation and destroyed in AD 70. So how, in any reasonable sense, is this fulfilled?

Brueggemann’s suggestion, that a text such as this is to be viewed in a promissory sense and not a predictive sense, is helpful (To Build, to Plant, 42). That is, the focus here is not when and how this will be fulfilled but that it will be fulfilled. This is more promise than prediction.

There is a sense that this will be fulfilled in the prophet’s time, relatively speaking. The exiles do return to Jerusalem. There is also a spiritual sense in which this is fulfilled in the time of Christ when he restores all things spiritually and brings an invisible, but real, kingdom. Finally, this is fulfilled in the new Jerusalem that John sees coming down (Rev 21–22). In that moment all the promises of the prophets are ultimately fulfilled.

This is what theologians call the “horizons” of prophecy (see Wright, Message of Jeremiah, 304). There is the horizon of the time of the prophet, the horizon of the coming of Christ, and the final horizon of the new heavens and the new earth. The challenge of interpretation is to understand on which horizon the text is to be viewed.

One could say that all things are fulfilled in relation to Christ and the gospel message. The prophets anticipate Christ, Christ comes, and then his obedience to the will of the Father executes the plan to consummate all things by Christ. This is to reverse the language of Colossians 1:16: “Everything was created by him . . . through him and for him.” The Old Testament is for Christ, the New Testament is through Christ, and the Revelation is a reality by the obedience of Christ. Anticipation, execution, and consummation.

God Brings Justice

Jeremiah 30:23-24

The final section is sobering. It reminds God’s people that the coming storm cannot be stopped. Yet even this judgment is an expression of his integrity. Jeremiah writes,

The Lord’s burning anger will not turn back

until he has completely fulfilled the purposes of his heart.

In time to come you will understand it.

The harshest fulfillments of prophecy still remind us that God keeps his word. He is immutable. He always makes a promise to protect the weak and bring justice on the oppressors.

Conclusion

Jeremiah 30 is a text of hope in a dark time. God had promised them immediate hope and ultimate hope, but the ultimate hope would come on another horizon altogether. Let’s end at the beginning.

God made all things in the creation and then destroyed all things in the flood. However, Noah was too much like his father Adam, and the legacy of sin and separation from God simply proliferated with the race. God then started over with a new race—a physical race of people but a people who would be his through a covenant instituted by God. God initiated this covenant through Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3.

The Lord said to Abram:

Go out from your land,

your relatives,

and your father’s house

to the land that I will show you.

I will make you into a great nation,

I will bless you,

I will make your name great,

and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you,

I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt,

and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

Notice the three parts of the covenant: God would give them a land, make them numerous, and make them a blessing to all people.

One way to understand Scripture is the progression of how God kept the three parts of the covenant.

A Great Nation

When the famine forced the young family into the land of Egypt, they could not envision what would transpire. They would go in a family of seventy and emerge a nation of a few hundred thousand. They prospered so much that the Egyptian government was afraid they would rise up and force them into slavery.

A Land

After the exodus from Egypt, and their subsequent rebellion-induced wilderness wandering, they received the land God promised them. This was the land of Canaan.

A Blessing to All the Nations

It is at this point hard to see how they are a blessing to all nations. The answer is, of course, that they are a blessing to all the nations through the promised one, the Messiah. Jesus would come for every tribe and tongue. He would be a light to the nations (Isa 49:6), and all people would worship him (Phil 2:10; Rev 4–5).

As mentioned, Jeremiah 30 touches these horizons. There are promises that will be fulfilled a few years after they were declared by Jeremiah, some not until the time of Christ, and others still not until the new Jerusalem comes down. One way to view this would be through cycles of bondage and freedom.

Jeremiah is prophesying in the time that only two-thirds of the promise is complete. The Messiah has not yet come to bring all things to himself. Jeremiah’s message of restoration would not be completely fulfilled in the lifetime of those listening to the message.

Today the Abrahamic covenant is fulfilled, but not completely. In a real sense the covenant promise to Abraham was a missionary covenant. The blessing to the nations is a message that has not yet reached all the nations. The covenant, in this missionary sense, is more fully complete when we extend the missionary call to the world.

Discuss and Reflect

1. Describe the shift that takes place in chapter 30.
2. What is the significance of this restoration considering the trajectory of the whole Bible?
3. Is there a metaphor for salvation here? Can we speak of God’s restoring his people and draw an analogy with salvation?
4. How does the book of Nehemiah help us understand the fulfillment of the hope that is promised?
5. How is God’s promise to bring judgment on the wicked (vv. 23-24) strangely encouraging?
6. What does it mean that this passage is fulfilled on three horizons?
7. How do these horizons find their fulfillment in Christ?
8. Explain the chart showing cycles of bondage and freedom.
9. Describe how Jeremiah 30 echoes the Abrahamic covenant.
10. Why are the covenants in a sense “missionary covenants”?