Scripture Reading: Jer. 2:13; 17:9; 13:23; 23:5-6; 33:16; 31:33
In this message I would like to give a very brief concluding word to this life-study of Jeremiah.
The book of Jeremiah may be likened to a walnut: on the outside there is a hard shell, and on the inside there is a kernel. When I was young, I read Jeremiah a number of times, but I touched only the "shell" of this book; I did not see anything of the "kernel." Gradually, the Lord has opened the shell of Jeremiah and has shown me the kernel. In this message, therefore, I have the burden to speak a word concerning the kernel of the book of Jeremiah.
This kernel includes three matters — what God wants from us, what we are in our fallen condition, and what Christ is to us. Jeremiah strongly presents these three matters to us, but they are concealed within the shell. In order to see these three things, we need to "crack" the shell of Jeremiah and concentrate on the kernel inside.
What God wants from us is mentioned mainly in 2:13, which reveals that God is the fountain of living waters. God wants us to take Him as the fountain of living waters for our living. This means that He wants us to take Him as the source, the fountain, of our being. How can we take Him as our source? The only way to take God as the fountain of living waters is to drink of Him day by day. By drinking we take into us the living water that issues from God as the fountain.
The importance of drinking of God as the fountain is illustrated in John 4. To the Samaritan woman who had come to the well to draw water and whom the Lord Jesus had asked to give Him a drink, He said, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, Give Me a drink, you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water" (v. 10). When she asked Him where He could get this living water, He answered, "Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall by no means thirst forever; but the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water gushing up into eternal life" (v. 14). The Lord's word here indicates that whatever we drink becomes one with us. When we drink of God as the fountain of living waters, He becomes one with us, and we become one with Him. The more we drink of God, the more He is one with us and the more we are one with Him and constituted with Him in His life and nature.
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." The most evil thing in the eyes of God is to forsake Him as the source, as the fountain of living waters, and to turn to some other source. All other sources are idols. In this verse the idols are likened to broken cisterns, which cannot hold water. People today are busy hewing out for themselves all kinds of cisterns. Actually, these cisterns are idols. As we consider this situation, we need to realize that God wants us to take Him as the fountain, the source, of our life and our being.
Another aspect of the kernel of the book of Jeremiah is the exposure of what we are in our fallen condition. In this matter Jeremiah is very deep but also very simple. In 17:9 he speaks regarding the human heart, saying, "The heart is deceitful above all things / And it is incurable; / Who can know it?" Our heart is deceitful to the uttermost and incurable. Just as our heart is incurable, so our fallen nature is unchangeable. Thus, in 13:23 Jeremiah says, "Can the Cushite change his skin, / Or the leopard his spots? / Then you also may be able to do good, / Who are accustomed to do evil." In our fallen condition we are corrupt and rotten; there is no way for us to change, correct, or improve ourselves. The disciples of Confucius tried to use his teachings to improve themselves, but they have failed. As fallen human beings, we are incurable and unchangeable.
The third matter in the kernel of the book of Jeremiah is what Christ is to us.
Jeremiah 23:5 and 6 say, "Behold, days are coming, / Declares Jehovah, / When I will raise up to David a righteous Shoot...And this is His name by which He will be called, / Jehovah our righteousness." Although Christ is God, He became a Shoot, or Sprout, of David. This means that He was incarnated to be a descendant of David. As a Shoot, the Sprout, of David, Christ is tender, living, and fresh.
Christ, the righteous Shoot of David, is called Jehovah our righteousness. In our fallen condition we are corrupt, sinful, deceitful, incurable, and unchangeable. How could we ever be righteous before God? In ourselves this is impossible, but we can become righteous in Christ. Christ came to die on the cross for our sins, accomplishing redemption for us. Based upon Christ's redemption, God is able to forgive our sins, to forget our sins, and to justify us. Furthermore, with the redemption of Christ as the foundation, Christ Himself has become our righteousness. Not only have we been justified by God, but God has given Christ to us to be our righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30). It is a wonderful fact that Christ has become one with us to be our righteousness.
Outwardly, we are justified, having Christ as our righteousness, but inwardly we are still empty. Therefore, we need Christ to be something else to us. We need Christ as the divine life, the divine life that is wrought into our inner being (Jer. 31:33). This life is a law which works in us to dispense into our being all that God is in His rich being. As a result of this dispensing, this transfusing of God Himself into us, we are no longer empty. On the contrary, we are filled with the dispensing Triune God.
The inner law of the divine life within us has the capacity to make us one with God. In this life with its law, God is our God, and we are His people. The way for God to be our God is His divine life, and the way for us to be His people is also the divine life. Eventually, in the divine life and by the working of the law of the divine life, God will be wrought into us, and we will live Him and be constituted with Him in His life and nature but not, of course, in His Godhead.
Now we can see what God wants from us, what we are in our fallen condition, and what Christ is to us. God wants us to take Him as our source and to drink of Him every day so that He may become the river of the water of life within us. In our fallen condition we are hopeless, utterly corrupt, incurable, and unchangeable. But Christ has come to be our righteousness and our inner life. Outwardly, He is our righteousness for us to be justified by God. Inwardly, He is the divine life to fill us, to make us one with God, and even to constitute us with God that we may live God. Then we will be a corporate Body, the organism of the Triune God. This is the kernel of the book of Jeremiah.
