Day 227 (Jeremiah 30-31) - Year 8

**Tara-Leigh Cobble** (0:01)
Hey Bible Readers, I'm Tara-Leigh Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap.
After all the tough times Jeremiah and the people have been through, today's reading was a breath of fresh air. It was filled with reminders of God's plan. I'm a planner, so I appreciate a good plan. And one of the most important aspects of planning is establishing a process. It's great to know you want to visit Europe, but you can't just book a hotel there. You have to book a flight, figure out how to get to the airport, figure out how to get from the airport to your hotel, make sure you're checking in after the last person has checked out, all kinds of details. Fortunately, nothing slips through the cracks with God. He's got his process all planned out and it's seamless. I wanted to get a good overview of his plan, so I underlined all the things he says he will do for Judah and Israel in chapter 30 Here they are. I will restore the fortunes of my people. I will bring them back to the land. I will break his yoke from off your neck. I will burst your bonds. I will raise up a king. I will save you. I am with you. I will make a full end of all the opposing nations. I will discipline you in just measure. I will not leave you unpunished. I have dealt you the blow of an enemy. I have done these things to you. I will make your predators into prey.
I will restore health to you. I will heal your wounds. I will restore Jacob's fortunes. I will have compassion. I will multiply them. I will make them honored. I will punish their oppressors. I will make them draw near. I will be your God. That's a lot for Israel and Judah to go through. And on the surface, some of it may sound cruel, but this process is necessary in getting the scales to fall from their eyes and in softening their hearts. Yes, God is wounding them, but all his wounds are ways to heal.
He can be trusted. He's taking us through the process. And if you've lived through anything challenging, you know that the processes we go through have a formative effect on us. They build character. They teach us what's important. They shape us into people who are hopefully more humble, less entitled, more compassionate, less impatient, and ultimately more like God, who has repeatedly described himself as merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, a God of forgiveness and justice. In verses eight through nine, God talks about the captivity they're in, bound to Babylon. And he says he'll break their yokes eventually. And when they're set free at that point, they'll turn to serve God instead. True freedom isn't just doing whatever we want. That's what got them in this place to begin with.
Here's the paradox. We will always be serving someone or something. And true freedom is when we serve God instead of our oppressors or ourselves.
Chapter 31 opens with a promise that God is going to restore people from among all the tribes of Israel and Judah, not just people from the kingdom of Judah. Sometimes God states this outright, and sometimes He hints at it when He refers to them as Jacob. You may recall that the tribes are named after the sons of Jacob, so Jacob is sometimes used as a collective term for all of them.
All along this journey, God is protecting His people. Even as He drives them out of their land, they not only survive the sword, but He says they found grace in the wilderness. He gave them rest. He appeared to them, and He reminded them of His everlasting love for them, as well as His promise of restoration. And when the time comes for them to return to the land, He really wants them to do it. Because if they refuse and stay in the place of their exile, it reveals that they don't believe His promises of restoration. So He reiterates this promise over and over in case they're tempted to doubt Him.
God also talks to them about the new covenant He's making with them, the everlasting covenant. We first read about this in Isaiah 55 on Day 211
He says this new covenant will happen when He writes the law on their heart. Since their heart's sipping the problem all along, God's plan involves getting to the root and addressing the real issue. Then they will know Him, and He will forgive their iniquity and forget their sins.
All of this is pointing to the payment of Christ on the cross and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. That's where heart change happens, when God gives us a new heart and His Spirit comes to live in us forever. Without that, we'd just be trying to modify our behavior, which has a way of making people exhausted and disappointing and arrogant and fearful all at once. But the work of His Spirit in us is a different thing altogether. It brings peace.