The Remnant and the Thread

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.