The Remnant and the Thread

Jeremiah 23:1-8

Main Idea: The God-Shepherd provides for his sheep.

1. Bad Shepherds Scatter the Sheep (23:1-2a).
2. The God-Shepherd Brings the Sheep Together (23:2b-4).
3. The God-Shepherd Brings a New Leader (23:5-6).
4. The God-Shepherd Brings a New Reputation (23:7-8).

Good authors always embed clues in their writing. When you start reading a good novel, you pay attention to details because you do not know which details will wind up being significant in the end. After all, if the author is effective, they can weave a theme throughout the whole book. In the end the threads will all come together. The finished product will, like a well-made garment, have central thread that holds the plot together. Details that at first seemed insignificant will, in the end, prove pivotal.

After Jesus rose from the dead, he came up alongside two of his disciples, and something remarkable happened: “Then beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted for them the things concerning himself in all the Scriptures” (Luke 24:27). Then later when he sat down with his disciples, he explained things even more explicitly.

He told them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. He also said to them, “This is what is written: The Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead the third day, and repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And look, I am sending you what my Father promised. As for you, stay in the city until you are empowered from on high.” (Luke 24:44-49; emphasis added)

Jesus opened their minds. What was he doing? He was showing them the threads of the Bible. He was saying, “Look, this was the plan all along. I want you to see it.”

All the evidence of the New Testament is that they really did understand what Jesus was saying. Taking clues from the conversation of Christ, the New Testament was composed as a commentary on the Old Testament. Think about it.

• The first Gospel, the book of Matthew, has, on average, an Old Testament quotation or allusion in every chapter.
• The strategy of the first Christian sermon (Acts 2:14-36) was to show where the death and resurrection of Christ were prophesied in Joel 2 and Psalms 16 and 110.
• Paul says explicitly in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, “For I passed on to you as most important what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.”
• The book of Hebrews is considered a sermon built on the text of Psalm 110.
• The book of Revelation is the most intertextual of all the books of the Bible; it really cannot be understood apart from its constant allusions to the Old Testament prophets.

We could multiply examples, but the point is clear. When Jesus taught them how to read the Bible, he focused on the threads that were holding the whole thing together. This is what scholars refer to as the “compositional nature” of the Bible. Scripture is not a random collection of stories. Rather, it is composed with a specific purpose: to show the glory of God through the exaltation of Christ as he reconciles man to God. When you understand this purpose, you can do what Christ encouraged his disciples to do: see how this theme is developed throughout the book.

While we have not discussed it much thus far, we are now approaching a seminal text in the book of Jeremiah. In this text, like many to follow, we see a specific thread in Scripture. There are many in Jeremiah, but here is an explicit thread that points to the future coming and work of Jesus Christ.

Context

The context of this passage is the reality of wicked shepherds in the land. The shepherds are wicked because they lead people astray. They speak when the Lord has not spoken.

God had promised that he would ultimately give them good shepherds when in Jeremiah 3:15 he said, “I will give you shepherds who are loyal to me, and they will shepherd you with knowledge and skill.” This is pitted against the bad shepherds who are under God’s judgment. Several times already Jeremiah had prophesied against these evil shepherds:

For the shepherds are stupid:

They don’t seek the Lord.

Therefore they have not prospered,

and their whole flock is scattered. (10:21)

Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard;

they have trampled my plot of land.

They have turned my desirable plot

into a desolate wasteland.

They have made it a desolation.

It mourns, desolate, before me.

All the land is desolate,

but no one takes it to heart. (12:10-11)

Despite this, God affirms that he is their shepherd.

But I have not run away from being your shepherd,

and I have not longed for the fatal day.

You know my words were spoken in your presence. (17:16)

In this context God provides a biting summary of their leadership: they do not gather the sheep; they scatter them.

Bad Shepherds Scatter the Sheep

Jeremiah 23:1-2a

The shepherding metaphor is ubiquitous in the Scriptures. The hillsides were filled with shepherds tending their sheep. The sheep were well cared for because they were a source of food and clothing. A good shepherd could care for his sheep, understanding that these animals were created to live in a herd. Left alone, a sheep could not care for itself. Once they were scattered, they could not find food and water on their own, and, more seriously, they were vulnerable as prey for the ever-present predators.

The bad shepherds of Israel had not attended to their flock. The shepherds were derelict of duty, and clearly they cared more for their own welfare than they did the welfare of the sheep. They were self-attending but not attentive to the sheep.

Unattended sheep scatter. But remember, this is a metaphor. During Jeremiah’s lifetime the people of God went into captivity, to exile, displaced from their homeland. In New Testament times the hillsides of first-century Palestine were scattered with refugees, people displaced from their homeland. God has seen their plight, and he will respond.

The metaphor of a wolf in sheep’s clothing stays with us to this day—the idea of someone who is not what he appears to be. The shepherds appeared to care. After all it was their function to care. They just didn’t. Here is the good news: every time there is a bad shepherd, the God-Shepherd responds.

The God-Shepherd Brings the Sheep Together

Jeremiah 23:2b-4

So what does God do when bad shepherds scatter his sheep? First, he deals with the shepherds (v. 2b). They are teachers who are not teaching, leaders who are not leading, and God will hold them accountable.

Second, he gathers a “remnant” out of all the countries where they have been scattered (v. 3). Though mentioned in Jeremiah twice in passing, this remnant will be mentioned eighteen more times, becoming a significant theme in the book.

So, who exactly is this remnant?

God’s strategy to gather a remnant who will follow the God-Shepherd is not new; it is a thread that is woven into the whole. When Adam’s descendants sinned, God used the small remnant of the family of Noah. When Noah’s descendants sinned, God began again, not by destroying the world and starting with a new people, but with a spiritual nation through the offspring of Abraham. Through Abraham God created a spiritual race within the human race.

The spiritual race thrived in their promised land under the leadership of David, was divided after Solomon, and eventually scattered under the leadership of the subsequent kings.

By Jeremiah’s time the spiritual race is itself desperately wicked and literally scattered throughout the known world. Yet God is going to isolate a remnant within this spiritual race. This is the people among the people, the true followers of God among the nominal people of God.

After he gathers this remnant, God promises that they will be fruitful and multiply. This is a continuation of God’s promise to Abraham. They would have land, and they would have offspring. God also promised new leaders who would keep them free from fear and not one of them would be missing.

Under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah, the people would once again enter the promised land. Throughout this desperate situation of disobedience and rebellion, God is keeping his covenant promise to them. They will be in the land, and they will be fruitful.

Yet the greatest promise will arrive with the coming of the Christ.

The God-Shepherd Brings a New Leader

Jeremiah 23:5-6

“Look, the days are coming”—this is the Lord’s declaration—

“when I will raise up a Righteous Branch for David.

He will reign wisely as king

and administer justice and righteousness in the land.

In his days Judah will be saved,

and Israel will dwell securely.

This is the name he will be called:

The Lord Is Our Righteousness.”

Jeremiah is not replete with messianic prophecies, but this is a glorious one. So the bad shepherds scatter and destroy the sheep. What is God’s ultimate response? He will bring the ultimate Shepherd. He will bring the good Shepherd!

This passage reads much like Ezekiel 34, which criticizes wicked shepherds because they neglected the sheep, allowed them to be prey, and then ate the sheep! God’s response was to displace them with the penultimate shepherd-warrior, King David:

I will establish over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will shepherd them. He will tend them himself and will be their shepherd.

I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David will be a prince among them. I, the Lord, have spoken. (Ezek 34:23-24)

This idea of Jesus’s being the ultimate shepherd is not lost on the New Testament writers.

• Jesus wept over Jerusalem because they were sheep without a shepherd (Matt 9:36).
• Jesus is the good shepherd (John 10).
• Jesus is the stricken shepherd (Matt 26:31).
• Jesus is the chief shepherd (1 Pet 5:4).
• Jesus is the great shepherd of the sheep (Heb 13:20).

Perhaps the most interesting contrast is that Jesus says he is like a shepherd who seeks sheep and rejoices over them (Luke 15:3-7). In wild contrast to the wicked shepherds of Jeremiah’s day who scatter sheep, Jesus seeks after the one that is lost and then brings it home. They scatter. He gathers.

The problem is lost sheep. God’s ultimate answer is a new shepherd, and this shepherd-leader is referred to as a Righteous Branch.

If this message is delivered during the time of Zedekiah, then perhaps this is a response to his leadership (Huey, Jeremiah, Lamentations, 212). The coming Righteous Branch is in contrast to the leaders who would not bring righteousness to the land. It is interesting that when Jesus ultimately comes to rule the world, he comes bringing right judgment and is described as waging war in righteousness (Rev 19:11). The idea of righteous war seems oxymoronic to us. How could war ever be right? But that way of thinking discounts the way the Shepherd feels about his sheep. He has seen them maligned for so long that he will now bring right judgment. All loving shepherds must fight for the lives of their sheep.

The effect of the presence of the new Righteous Branch is a new reputation.

The God-Shepherd Brings a New Reputation

Jeremiah 23:7-8

The reputation of Israel will now change. No longer will they be the nation that was saved from Egypt. Their reputation will be updated to be the nation that is regathered back from exile in Babylon.

This really is remarkable. The story of deliverance from Egypt is so profound that several movies have been made from it. The drama of the plagues inflicted, the Red Sea parted, and the Egyptians drowned, inundated in the water of their own defiance, was such a remarkable story that it defines a people—the delivered people. These are the people who, with apologies to Roosevelt, spoke softly and followed a big God. This was not just part of their reputation; it was their reputation.

Yet if God could gather a remnant from all the nations, if he could rebuild them, if he could part the political red tape that kept them in all different kinds of nations, and if he could raise up again what was fallen, then that would be a miracle of biblical proportions. That would be their new reputation.

Conclusion

This is the major thread we need to see. It’s possible that you read the Bible backwards. You read the end before the beginning. I certainly did. I knew the story of Zacchaeus before the story of Abraham. I understood the cross and the resurrection before I understood the sacrificial system. Perhaps that’s the way it has to be. I need to encounter Christ before I need to understand why he came and how he came. But we do need to understand the whole.

There is a compositional nature to the way God has designed his Word. So we come to Christ, and then we spend their rest of our lives understanding how Christ came to us. It is a massive history behind our salvation. There is a method to the Messiah. Yes, he came for me. But we should be warned that the personalization of our faith can have the unintended effect of ignoring the corporate, national, and even literary nature in which he came. Christ came from the nation of Israel; Christ’s coming is revealed in a book. This is not unimportant. We are commanded to read the book, and in doing so we appreciate what the disciples were called to see: that his life is a woven thread that, once seen, can help us understand the whole garment of salvation. It is the thread that holds the whole; it is the thread that came from the remnant.

One can’t help read this passage and think of John 15:1-8.

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. Every branch in me that does not produce fruit he removes, and he prunes every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce more fruit. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me. If anyone does not remain in me, he is thrown aside like a branch and he withers. They gather them, throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this: that you produce much fruit and prove to be my disciples.

Perhaps it is mixing metaphors a bit. It’s not clear that Jesus is trying to allude to the Righteous Branch title of Jeremiah 23 in John 15, but the relationship is really striking.

Jesus is teaching his disciples to think of their relationship with God like this: The Father takes care of his vineyard. Jesus is the main vine in this vineyard, and then coming from this vine are little shoots, branches. We only have the sustenance and protection of the Father if we are abiding in the Son. We are to abide in him if we want to bear fruit.

Yet the question this raises is, What if someone does not bear fruit? Interestingly, Jesus deals with this first. If someone does not bear fruit, that person is removed (v. 2) and then discarded (v. 6), thus this contrast of life and death. Living things produce; dead things wither, die, and are discarded.

While there may be no textual relationship to Jeremiah 23, there certainly is a relational one. Israel had a remnant within the nation. To use the language of John 15 in the great vineyard of God, there were only a few who were bearing fruit. The rest were trimmed; they were cut.

This trimming of the bad and restoring of the good was relationally a precursor to how God would relate to us. He is to this day calling out a remnant of people from the world who will abide in him and allow him to shepherd them.

So for those who want to be in the remnant, there is a thread for that.

Reflect and Discuss

1. How is Jesus the thread that holds Scripture together?
2. Why were the leaders wicked shepherds?
3. Are there other passages in the Bible that speak of good and bad shepherds?
4. What made them bad shepherds (vv. 1-2)?
5. What is the principle difference between the bad shepherds and the God-Shepherd?
6. How are we to understand the new leader of verses 5-6? Who is he?
7. What is the new reputation that the God-Shepherd brings (vv. 7-8)?
8. What exactly is the “remnant”?
9. How is this chapter to be understood on three different horizons?
10. How does this passage relate to John 15:1-8?