Scripture Reading: Jer. 2:13; Lam. 3:22-23; Jer. 23:5-8; 31:33-34
After spending more than sixty-six years in studying the Bible, I can testify that the highest peak of the revelation in the Word is the revelation concerning God's economy and God's dispensing to produce the New Jerusalem. It is very important that we have this view when we read the book of Jeremiah. Otherwise, we will not have a clear and proper understanding of Jeremiah's writing. Thus, in this message I am burdened to give a word regarding God's economy with His dispensing in the book of Jeremiah.
The Bible consummates with the revelation of the city of New Jerusalem. This indicates that the New Jerusalem is God's goal. The vision of the New Jerusalem is the conclusion of the Bible, which has one thousand one hundred eighty-nine chapters. All the books of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, are related in some way to the New Jerusalem as God's goal. However, because the Bible speaks of so many other things, in our reading of the Word we may easily be distracted and not see God's goal. In His wisdom, God does not directly say in the Scriptures that His goal is to have the New Jerusalem. Instead, knowing that the New Jerusalem is too wonderful for us to imagine, He reveals this matter by using the Bible with its plain words, stories, histories, types, figures, and shadows. By all these different means, He reveals His thought concerning the New Jerusalem and depicts the various aspects of the New Jerusalem.
God has an economy, and this economy involves a plan with many arrangements. God's aim in His economy is to have a group of human beings who have His life and nature inwardly and His image and likeness outwardly. This group of people is a corporate entity, the Body of Christ, to be one with Him and live Him for His corporate expression. As God is expressed not only by the Body but also through the Body, He is glorified. When He is glorified, His people are also glorified in His glorification. In this way God and man are one in glory.
In this oneness we, God's people, are not separate from God, but we definitely remain distinct from Him. We are one with God in life, in nature, in element, in essence, and in constitution. We are also one with Him in purpose, goal, image, and likeness. Nevertheless, no matter how much we are one with God, we do not share His Godhead and will never share it. Man remains man, and God remains God. Yes, in the incarnation of Christ, God became a man, but He did not give up His Godhead. Rather, He has reserved and preserved the Godhead for Himself alone. Thus, man is still limited, and God still possesses the unique Godhead.
The group of human beings who are one with God in every way except in the Godhead is symbolized, signified, depicted, and portrayed by a wonderful, holy city — the New Jerusalem. We need to keep this vision before us as we come to the book of Jeremiah.
In Jeremiah 2:13 we have the first crucial matter in this book concerning God's economy. In this verse God, through the prophet, presents Himself to the children of Israel as a fountain of living waters. In principle, God did the same thing in Genesis 2, after the creation of man. God did not say to man, "You must know that I am your Creator. Remember that you are My creature and that you should be holy and loving, just as I am." Instead of giving such a charge to man, God placed him in a garden, in front of two trees — the tree of life, which signifies God, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which signifies Satan (Gen. 2:9). Then God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (vv. 16-17). This indicates that God wanted man to partake of Himself as signified by the tree of life. Immediately after the first mention of the tree of life, we are told that "a river went out of Eden to water the garden" (v. 10). It is significant that the last chapter of the Bible also speaks of the tree of life and the river of water of life (Rev. 22:1-2).
The picture in Genesis 2 of the tree of life and the river indicates that God is both the tree of life and the living water for man's existence. What God desires of man is that man would eat of Him as the tree of life and drink of Him as the water of life. Through our eating and drinking of Him, God is able to dispense Himself into us as our life and our life supply.
As I have been carrying out the life-study of the Scriptures, I have sometimes pointed out that the particular book we were studying is an abstract of the Bible. The reason I say this is that all the books of the Bible are concerned with the same thing. Thus, now I wish to say about Jeremiah what I have said about other books: The book of Jeremiah is an abstract of the entire Bible. We have already seen that the book of Jeremiah is an abstract of the Bible in the sense that it presents God as the fountain of living waters. Let us now go on to consider another way in which this book is an abstract of the Scriptures.
In Genesis 3 the devil appeared in the form of a serpent, and both Adam and Eve were seduced by him to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In Jeremiah the serpent also comes in to distract God's people from the tree of life to the tree of knowledge. Jeremiah 2:13 says, "My people have committed two evils: / They have forsaken Me, / The fountain of living waters, / To hew out for themselves cisterns, / Broken cisterns, / Which hold no water." This tells us that Israel had been distracted from the tree of life to the tree of knowledge, from the fountain of living waters to the idols (the cisterns). The children of Israel might have said, "We are not worshipping idols — we are hewing out cisterns." They did not realize, however, that by hewing out cisterns they were turning to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. My point here is that in Jeremiah we can see the two trees. Chapters two through ten show us the same two trees that were in Genesis 2. In these chapters of Jeremiah, God seemed to be saying, "Foolish people! Why do you not come to Me? Why do you not partake of Me as the tree of life? Why do you go to the other tree, to the idols?" By turning to the other tree, Israel had forsaken God and His law.
At this juncture I would like to say a word concerning the law of God. Paul tells us that the law was not a part of God's original purpose. Originally, God did not intend to give us the law. Why, then, was it given? Why did God come in to give the law? In Galatians 3:19 Paul explains that the law "was added because of the transgressions." This means that after God presented His purpose to man, man did not accept God and His purpose but instead began to do things according to himself. For this reason, God came in to add the law.
Although the law is something added, it nevertheless has a positive function. The positive function of the law is to present a portrait of God. In the Ten Commandments we see a picture of what God is. The first five commandments are based on Jehovah God's uniqueness and jealousy, and the last five commandments are based on Jehovah God's attributes of love, light, holiness, and righteousness. By using the law to present a picture of Himself, God was indicating that He wanted His people to become His duplication.
While the law was being given to Moses on Mount Sinai, the children of Israel were doing many evil things in violation of the Ten Commandments. In particular, they sinned against God by worshipping the golden calf. Throughout the centuries Israel continued to break the commandments of the law more and more. Eventually, their breaking of the law reached the peak at the time of Jeremiah.
The people of Israel went so far as to have a kind of coordination in their worship of idols. Regarding this, in Jeremiah 7:18 God says, "The children gather wood, and the fathers light the fire, and the women knead the dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven and to pour out drink offerings to other gods to provoke Me to anger." What a coordination! It seemed that in making idols and worshipping them, everyone had a function. It is hard to believe that God's people could have degraded to such an extent.
At Jeremiah's time the people of Israel were doing many other kinds of evil things. In committing adultery they "trooped to the house of harlots" (5:7). They roamed about like well-fed horses, "each one neighing after his neighbor's wife" (v. 8). They dealt falsely in order to wrest unjust gain. They had altogether lost the image and likeness of God and had become serpents and scorpions. Thus, in the sight of God, Israel had come to the end and was finished. God's prophet Jeremiah wanted nothing to do with the people and said, "Oh, that I had a traveler's lodging place in the wilderness / That I might leave my people and go away from them, / For all of them are adulterers and an assembly of treacherous men" (9:2). He no longer wanted to see the wickedness of Israel.
Apparently God had given up Israel and would have nothing more to do with them. Actually God did not give up His people. He knew what He was doing with Israel, and He knew that He had a glorious goal to reach. Therefore, although He chastised them, He still had compassion on them. Both God and Jeremiah sympathized with the people of Israel in their suffering of God's punishment (9:10-11, 17-19; 8:18-22; 9:1; 10:19-25). Knowing God's sympathy toward Israel, Jeremiah could say, "It is Jehovah's lovingkindness that we are not consumed, / For His compassions do not fail; / They are new every morning. / Great is Your faithfulness" (Lam. 3:22-23). In His lovingkindness and compassion, God preserved Israel, and Israel continued to exist. Furthermore, among His degraded elect who had been sent into exile, God had His overcomers such as Daniel and his companions.
In addition, Jeremiah prophesied concerning the coming restoration of Israel (23:3-8; 33:1-26). In this time of restoration, God will gather His dispersed and scattered people back to the holy land. Eventually, Jeremiah prophesied that Christ would come as the righteous Shoot (23:5-6).
Jeremiah's prophecy concerning Christ indicates that only Christ can fulfill God's economy. Only Christ is the answer to God's requirements in His economy. In fulfilling God's economy, Christ is first our righteousness and then our redemption and our all-inclusive inner life. As our life supply, Christ is our food and drink.
All these aspects of Christ are fully developed in the New Testament. In particular, the New Testament reveals that Christ is our life (Col. 3:4). Christ's being our Savior and Redeemer is for His being our life. As our life, Christ is everything to us. He is our food, our drink, our energy, our power, our capacity, our strength. In and through such a Christ, we become one with God in life, nature, image, and appearance.
What Christ is to us today He will be to Israel at the time of His coming back. At His coming back, Israel will repent and receive Christ (Zech. 12:10—13:1). They will receive Christ as their righteousness, redemption, and life, and they will drink of the fountain of living waters and eat of the tree of life. As a result, Israel too will be constituted with God and become one with God in life, nature, image, and appearance.
The picture portrayed by Jeremiah concerning Israel is a picture of us as believers in Christ today. This means that we are the same as Israel. Like Israel, we once had a "bridal day" (Jer. 2:2), a time when we pledged our love to the Lord and told Him that we loved Him to the uttermost. However, many believers have left their first love (Rev. 2:4) and have become degraded according to the pattern presented in Revelation 2 and 3. We may be disappointed with such a situation, but God is not disappointed. He knows that there will be a time of restoration and that sooner or later we will be willing to be subdued.
Eventually we will all be submissive to the Lord and recognize that we are evil; we will confess that we are a totality of sin. When we realize this, we will say, "Lord, I am nothing, but You are my everything. I am sin, but You are my righteousness. I am dead, but You are my life." Moreover, we will realize that along with the divine life with its sense, law, and capacity, we also have the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). We will see that day by day we are being sanctified, renewed, and transformed, and that the time is coming when we will be conformed to the image of Christ and be glorified. Whereas God will always be God with the unique Godhead and whereas there will always be a distinction between us and God, we will nevertheless be constituted with God and be one with Him in life, nature, element, essence, image, and appearance so that we may be His corporate expression for eternity.
Some may find it hard to believe that this revelation concerning God's economy with His dispensing can be found in the book of Jeremiah. We should be reminded that Jeremiah speaks of God's being the fountain of living waters and of Christ's being our righteousness. The book also speaks of the new covenant with all its blessings. After Israel's failure, God came in to say, "This is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares Jehovah: I will put My law within them and write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be My people" (Jer. 31:33). In Hebrews 8 Paul quotes this portion of Jeremiah and applies it to us, the New Testament believers. This means that the new covenant with its privileges and blessings is for us to enjoy today. Israel will have this enjoyment later, after the Lord's coming back.
Jeremiah truly is an abstract of the Bible. As such an abstract, this book is a picture showing us that we are nothing and that Christ is everything to us. If we see that we are nothing, we will not expect anything of ourselves. Rather, according to God's economy with His dispensing, we will take Christ as our life, our life supply, and our everything.
