March 5, Jeremiah 33
"Thus says the LORD who made the earth, the LORD who formed it to establish it -- the LORD is his name: Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known." - Jeremiah 33:2-3
We consider ourselves a technologically advanced people living in a modern age. Compared to the centuries before ours, that's certainly true. Everyday we use (and I fear take for granted) means of transportation and tools to do our work that our ancestors could not have imagined. We get our daily information and entertainment from devices that were at most imaginative concepts of science fiction just a few decades ago.
It's hard to imagine how we could explain these modern inventions to an ancient people, or to people from a remote place who know nothing of electricity, computers or the internet. In a similar way, but on a far greater scale, the prophets sometimes delivered revelations from God about the future. The concepts were so foreign to their time and frame of reference that God gave the prophets messages about unimaginable realities in terms they and their hearers could understand.
The Babylonians' cruel siege of Jerusalem was already underway. The people in the city tore down fine houses to get building materials for constructing a defense. Casualties of starvation, disease and conflict were already high, with bodies piling up in abandoned houses because there was no time or place to bury them.
God told Jeremiah that the present distress was from him and under his control. God had hidden his face and determined to strike down the rebellious city.
No one could see or imagine a future beyond the destruction of the city and their nation. But God revealed a future, a glowing glorious one, to give his beleaguered people hope. He said he would bring healing, health, prosperity and security to his people again. He promised to cleanse and forgive their rebellion. He foretold times of praise and joy, worship and offerings. David's descendant would be on the throne again, and the high priest would once again make intercession for them. The sounds of mirth, gladness and worship would again ring out in this place where Jeremiah's generation could only imagine a desolate, uninhabited ruin.
Because Jeremiah was a true and faithful prophet of God we know he could not contradict himself. He had already announced the end of the Davidic dynasty and the Leviticus priesthood. So how were the promises we find in Chapter 33 going to come true?
The New Testament says that Jesus son of Mary was and is the promised Messiah. He was quite literally a direct descendant of Abraham and David, but not from the doomed line of the Davidic dynasty. He would be the high priest who offered himself to God to redeem his people. And his kingship and his priesthood would be unending. The fractured nations of Israel and Judah would be called back to God and to one another in the new Israel in Christ. The images of prosperity pointed to spiritual blessings and the new Jerusalem was the spiritual and heavenly city, not the rebuilt earthly one.
We know those things because we have the New Testament. We can grasp (at least as much as possible in this world and this side of eternity) what Jeremiah was describing to those people to give them hope. David’s dynasty and Solomon’s empire were the gold standard references for them of a great kingdom. The sacrifices and priesthood of the Levites was the only revealed means of acceptable sacrifice to God they knew anything about. They only knew a literal Jerusalem, and couldn't imagine a reconciliation of Israel and Judah (plus Gentiles!) in Messiah's kingdom.
Indeed, God told them and us great and hidden things we could never have otherwise known. He communicated those spiritual and eternal realities to us in ways we could understand.
Can we appreciate how difficult it would be to explain these things to people who knew nothing like what we know from the New Testament? There are still plenty of mysteries and unknowns about spiritual things and eternity. But can you see how thankful we should be for what God has done for us in Christ? We're so blessed! God help us to never take for granted these blessings we can understand. And may the good Lord grant us grace to trust him more about the things that are still hidden and unknown.
Copyright © 2024 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Today in God's Word—March 2024
East Tallassee Church of Christ
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