Scripture Reading: Jer. 42:1-22; 43:1-7; 2:13; 17:9; 13:23; 23:5-6; 31:33
In this message I would like to give a word on the biblical principle of being one with God as revealed in the book of Jeremiah.
The book of Jeremiah unveils how God fulfills His economy by dispensing Himself into His chosen people. This is the principle that God wants us to see in the first forty-five chapters of this book, chapters that cover many points and provide many illustrations.
In 2:13 Jehovah speaks concerning the two basic sins committed by the children of Israel. The first sin was forsaking Jehovah as the fountain, the source, of living waters; the second sin was hewing out for themselves broken cisterns that could not hold water. This second sin was a matter of not trusting in God but of trusting in themselves to do something for their own enjoyment. These two sins govern the entire book of Jeremiah.
The principle in the Bible is that God does not want His chosen people to take anything other than Himself as their source. After God created man, He placed him in front of the tree of life, which signifies God as life. By doing this God was indicating that He wanted man to partake of the tree of life, not anything else. To partake of the tree of life is to take God as our unique source, as our source of everything.
What is sin? Sin is a matter of leaving God and doing something by ourselves and for ourselves. This is exactly what the children of Israel did. They forsook God as the fountain of living waters for their supply, and, according to their opinion, they did whatever they could to work out something by themselves for their enjoyment. I wish to emphasize that sin is to forsake God and to do something by ourselves and for ourselves. This is the principle throughout the Bible, and Jeremiah repeated this principle again and again so that we would be impressed.
Jeremiah 34—45 is a section of twelve chapters showing us the stubbornness of Israel in sinning against Jehovah. In these chapters one thing is made clear — that Israel has forsaken God as the source, the fountain, of living waters. Consider, for example, the situation with Gedaliah. Although he was faithful in caring for Jeremiah, God's prophet (40:5-6), he did not seek the Lord's word (vv. 13-14), because this was not his habit. He did not take God as his source to be one with Him and to receive whatever issued from Him. If he had been such a person, the first thing he would have done would have been to receive the word of God.
To take, receive, and keep the word of God, we must be absolutely one with God. We must trust in Him, rely on Him, and not have any opinion that comes out of ourselves. We should simply enjoy what God has done and what He will do for us. This is the way to fulfill God's economy, and this is the new covenant. In the new covenant we are one with God and let Him write Himself into us as our life and as our life law with its capacity for us to function. We all need to see this.
The principle of the Bible, especially of the New Testament, is that God opens Himself to us that we may enter into Him, receive Him, and become one with Him. Then He will be in us, and we will be in Him, taking Him as everything. The first thing we will take is His word to express His thought, His will, His heart's desire, and His good pleasure; we will not care for our opinions or preferences. In this way we become His mouthpiece to speak Him forth to others for their supply.
If we see this, we will realize that the stubbornness of the children of Israel was due to their not being one with God. For example, Johanan, the leader of the remnant, strongly determined to go to Egypt to take refuge. He feared that the Babylonians would come to avenge the murder of Gedaliah. But God wanted them to remain in the holy land to be a remnant of His people. God would visit them and grace them and even use them to be His people as a testimony of the living God on earth. However, they altogether misunderstood God by their consideration and by their opinion. Nevertheless, all the leaders of the forces and all the people begged Jeremiah the prophet to pray for them concerning the way in which they should go and the thing which they should do, promising him that whether it was good or evil, they would listen to the voice of Jehovah (42:1-6). They said they would obey because they expected Jeremiah to go along with them. They expected that he would give them a "sugar-coated" word. Jeremiah, who was not one to speak such a word, told them that he would pray to Jehovah according to their words.
Instead of being in a hurry to speak, Jeremiah waited for ten days. After ten days the word of Jehovah came to them through Jeremiah, telling them not to go to Egypt but to remain in Judah. Jehovah said, "If you will still remain in this land, I will build you up and not tear you down, and I will plant you and not pluck you up" (v. 10a). This indicates that He would bless them, and they would enjoy Him. However, if they did not listen to this word but went to the land of Egypt, they would die there. Concerning this, Jehovah said, "If indeed you set your faces to go to Egypt and go to sojourn there, then the sword, which you fear, will overtake you there in the land of Egypt, and the famine, about which you are worried, will follow hard after you there in Egypt; and you will die there. And all the men who set their faces to go to Egypt, to sojourn there, will die by sword, by famine, and by pestilence; and they will have no survivors or any who have escaped from the evil which I will bring on them" (vv. 15b-17).
When Jeremiah finished speaking the words of Jehovah, all the people, including Johanan, accused him of lying. They said to him, "You are speaking falsehood; Jehovah our God has not sent you to say, You shall not go to Egypt to sojourn there" (43:2). Refusing to listen to the voice of Jeremiah to remain in the land of Judah, Johanan and all the leaders of the forces took the remnant and went to Egypt.
Once they were in Egypt, there was an argument between a great assemblage of those who knew that their wives burned incense to other gods and all the women who stood by, and Jeremiah the prophet (44:15-30). They told Jeremiah that they would not listen to him. Instead, they would burn incense to the queen of heaven (the wife of Nimrod) and pour out libations to her, just as they did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. They even went so far as to say that when they burned incense to the queen of heaven, they had plenty of food and were well off and did not see evil, but since they had ceased doing this, they lacked everything and were consumed by sword and by famine (vv. 17-18). That was a lie. When they were in Jerusalem, they were besieged and even forced to eat their children. Nevertheless, they told Jeremiah falsely that they were well off and did not experience calamities.
The children of Israel were a people who were not one with God. If they had been one with God, there would have been no problem. If they had been one with God, they would have received God's word and would have known His heart, His nature, His mind, and His purpose. If they had been one with God, then spontaneously they would have lived Him and would have been constituted with Him to be His testimony on earth.
The situation is the same among Christians today. We as Christians have also transgressed the principle of being one with God. We may not have a heart to be one with God, yet we like to be His people. The result is that we do not go along with God's will or God's mind, but rather express our opinions and care for our likes and dislikes. This is the reason for the lack of oneness among believers today. If we are not one with God, we cannot be one with one another. Those who are not one with God do not take His will and good pleasure but express their opinions and pursue their preferences. To do this is to hew out broken cisterns that can hold no water.
Because we, like the children of Israel, were not one with God and did not have the heart to do God's will or take His good pleasure, we offended God, transgressed His ordinances, and committed sins against His commandments. We were a people whose heart was deceitful and incurable (17:9). We were exposed as having a nature that is sinful and rebellious, a nature that, like the Ethiopian's skin and the leopard's spots, could not be changed (13:23). Since this was our situation, how could we be reconciled to God? How could we be justified by Him and taken by Him to be His people?
Jeremiah gives us the answer in 23:5 and 6. "Behold, days are coming, / Declares Jehovah, / When I will raise up to David a righteous Shoot; / And He will reign as King and act prudently / And will execute judgment and righteousness in the land. / In His days Judah will be saved, / And Israel will dwell securely; / And this is His name by which He will be called, / Jehovah our righteousness." The only way that we can be reconciled to God and justified by Him is by Christ, the new Sprout, the righteous Shoot, who is called Jehovah our righteousness. As the righteous Shoot, He came in the flesh as the descendant of David to die on the cross and shed His blood in order to accomplish redemption for our justification.
Based upon Christ's redemption we have been justified, and the Triune God has come into us to be our life, our person, and our everything. This creates a situation in which God is free to work out His eternal economy in us by His dispensing of Himself into our being. If we see this principle and grasp it, we will understand the entire book of Jeremiah.
The book of Jeremiah was not written according to the historical sequence, but this book surely has a spiritual sequence. First, Jeremiah shows us the basic sins of God's people — forsaking God and hewing out their own cisterns. Then the human heart is gradually exposed as being deceitful and incurable. We are wicked and hopeless, having a fallen nature that cannot change. In order to be one with God, we need Christ as the Shoot of David to be our redemption and justification. This ushers the Triune God into us to be our life, our inner life law, our capacity, and our everything. This is the new covenant (31:33). In the new covenant, we do not do anything. Rather, we are simply one with God to let Him write Himself into us as the law of life. This law of life implies the Triune God with the highest capacity for our function. God lives in us and has the freedom, in matters great and small, to dispense Himself into our being to carry out His economy. This dispensing will bring in the restoration of all things and will consummate in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth. The New Jerusalem is the consummation of the economy of God accomplished by His eternal dispensing.
In Jeremiah we see that we are redeemed, that we are justified, and that we have become one with God. Eventually we will know God, live God, and be constituted with God in His life and nature that we may be His corporate expression. This is the complete teaching of the Bible, especially in the New Testament, and this is the essence of the book of Jeremiah.
