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Jeremiah has a number of visions.

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One of the visions that he has is of a boiling pot that tips over and has got all this boiling,

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almost molten stuff in it.

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And he says that it tips over from the north.

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And then the boiling mass pours out.

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The message here is from the north, a boiling invasion is going to come upon Judah.

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Again, Babylon is from the east, but you don't just bring your army straight through the desert,

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the Arabian desert.

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You have to go around, or the Syrian desert, you go around, you go around the Fertile Crescent,

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up the Euphrates River, and then come down from the north.

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So that's what it's speaking of here.

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There's another incident that takes place with Jeremiah where he's written down about 20 years

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of his prophecy, or I should say, Baruch has, and it's delivered to the king, in this case,

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King Jehoiakim, so that the king may hear the word of the Lord.

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Remember, the prophets were, in many ways, especially the ones to address the king,

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because the king was the viceroy of Egypt, viceroy of Yahweh.

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And so this is delivered to the king, but how does the king treat the prophecy,

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treat the word of the Lord?

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He has it read to him, and as it's read, pieces are cut off, and he throws it in the fire.

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And so it tells you what he thinks of the prophecies of Jeremiah and also the word of the Lord.

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By the way, Jeremiah says, okay, we'll just start over again, and through the inspiration

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of the Spirit, he recites the prophecies again.

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Baruch writes them down.

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So they're re-transcribed.

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At another time, Jeremiah is put into stocks.

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This is primarily because he is foretelling the destruction of the temple,

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and the people of that day, including the priests, held to what was called the inviability of the temple,

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that the temple could not be violated, because the Spirit of the Lord dwelled there,

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that the presence of Yahweh was there.

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And so with Yahweh there, we were safe.

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The temple becomes almost like a magic charm or a rabbit's foot, a lucky charm for the people.

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And Jeremiah, in his great temple sermon, announces, no, the Lord will destroy the temple.

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It will become a mound of rubble, and the priests' bones will be bleaching in the midst of all of that rubble,

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and there will be snakes and lizards and so forth that will make their homes among the rubble and the bones and so forth of the priests.

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Well, that doesn't go over real well with the priests.

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And so the head priest has Jeremiah arrested, charged with blasphemy.

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He's about to be lynched by a lynched mob, but then he is saved only by the intervention of this Shapan man who rescues him.

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In another place, then, he is arrested and put in stocks, beaten in stocks for his message.

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So it's a very, very difficult ministry that he has.

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At another time, he is thrown into a cistern, a deep well, if you will, but not just a well.

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It's the septic tank.

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And there he sinks into the sludge and the slime and the filth of that septic tank and is left there simply to decay.

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But he's rescued once again just before he dies.

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He almost dies, but he's rescued and actually rescued by a foreigner, an Ethiopian.

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So these are some of the highlights of the book of Jeremiah.

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Again, it's a very long book, but some of the more important pieces.

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However, there are some other important messages from Jeremiah that are acted out, not just words he speaks, but actions, similar to what we've seen with Hosea.

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Acting out the message, pantomiming the message, if you will.

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And we'll see the same here with Ezekiel coming up, too, these more action prophecies.

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The first one takes place, I think, in chapter 13 or thereabouts.

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And the Lord tells Jeremiah to take his favorite loincloth.

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Brand new, clean, starched, pressed loincloth.

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Like boxer shorts, okay, think of that.

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Skivvies, yeah.

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And says, go to a riverbed and bury this in the ground under a rock.

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So he does, returns back.

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After a while, the Lord says, go and retrieve it.

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And so Jeremiah does just that.

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He goes and retrieves it.

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And by this time, of course, natural forces have taken effect here.

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And the fabric has decayed, mildew, stained, eaten away, filthy.

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And the message then from this object lesson is that Israel, specifically Judah,

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had once been bound to the Lord, just like loincloth, in a very intimate way, closely bound to the Lord.

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But Israel, Judah, has become filthy, corrupt, decrepit, worthless, only a thing to be thrown away now.

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So again, the image of the intimacy, the intimate bond, binding, but now the judgment of being thrown away.

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Another vision, and by the way, these object lessons may appear on the exam too,

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so important for you to recognize them and their source here, which prophet they come from.

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A basket, or two baskets actually, of figs.

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And one is very, very beautiful.

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The fruit is just at its prime, ripe, perfect, ready to be eaten.

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The second basket, however, the fruit is decaying, rotten, moldy, only worth throwing out.

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And the message here is that the Lord now will separate His people, like you're separating the good fruit from the bad fruit.

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And they will be in separate baskets, if you will, separate compartments.

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One batch will be the good fruit, one batch will be the bad fruit.

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And what the good fruit will be, will be actually that which is taken to Babylon.

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The exiles, those who are here, will be destroyed.

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So this is most likely after 597, and he's now comparing those who have gone to Babylon.

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They're the good fruit. They're the ones that God will preserve.

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They're the ones that God will use.

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The people who remain here will meet God's judgment.

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One other object lesson takes place while Jeremiah was in jail,

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and by the way, he was in jail a lot. He was in prison a lot.

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Again, not the most popular guy, certainly not the most easy ministry.

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This is while Jerusalem is being besieged just before the destruction.

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So during that two and a half year siege, from in the 580's, this is where he's at.

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So you've got kind of double jeopardy for him.

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Not only is he in jail, but he's in jail within a city that's being besieged by the Babylonians.

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Talk about hope against hope.

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And yet the Lord instructs him to do something that will show hope for the future.

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In Anathoth, where he had come from, he's got a relative who owns some land.

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And Jeremiah now says, I'm going to buy that land.

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The Lord tells him actually, buy that land.

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Now think about it.

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The city is besieged, it's about to fall.

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The stock market, if it hasn't already crashed, is already crashed.

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The economy is in a shambles.

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This isn't the time that you buy property, because the land is up for grabs.

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In fact, this is outside the city. It's already captive by the enemy, by the Babylonians.

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It's occupied that territory.

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And Jeremiah is buying the land.

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What is the message of hope in that action?

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It signifies a future. He's going to need it.

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It says, one day that land will be restored to the Jews.

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Jeremiah is a Jew, he's purchasing this land.

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It's a message. God's going to bring the Jews back.

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We will repossess this land, and then this will be the land of Jeremiah, his family.

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So it's an expression of that kind of hope.

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Okay, so again, it's a very, very difficult, difficult ministry that Jeremiah has.

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I've already described it. We could go into greater detail.

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Jeremiah was forbidden by the Lord to marry, so he had to live a celibate life.

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Not of his own choosing, but again, by the burden of the Lord placed upon him.

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And that was to express the sense of isolation of Judah, and the separation of Judah from Yahweh, that covenant marriage relationship.

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So he was a very, very isolated man, despised man, one who was rejected.

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Many see in him a type whose anti-type is Jesus.

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Christ, who was rejected by the people, oppressed by the authorities.

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So there are certainly some similarities there.

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But there's also some good news, other than even some of those object lessons that we've already seen.

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And these are primarily found in Jeremiah chapter 30 through 33.

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And in fact, it's in 32 that you have the purchase of that field, so that promise object action, object lesson, is embedded right in the middle of this section.

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Some words of hope.

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And these words of hope in these four chapters find their central focus in the promise of a new covenant.

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And this is in Jeremiah chapter 31.

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You would do well to read all of these hopeful chapters, but especially here chapter 31.

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And beginning with verse 31.

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The promise of a new covenant.

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Let's take a look at that.

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Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

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Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.

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My covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord.

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So he's saying, I'm going to make a new covenant, and it's going to be distinct, different from the former covenant, the Sinaitic covenant.

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The covenant that was made at Sinai after I delivered them out of Egypt.

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That covenant that I bound myself to them like a husband does to a wife.

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But now the wife has become faithless, gone whoring after other gods.

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And so the covenant is broken.

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The divorce papers are now signed for that covenant because they broke it.

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What is this new covenant?

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Verse 33, this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord.

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I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.

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I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

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And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, know the Lord.

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Remember, judgment that came at his call was that the people don't know the Lord now.

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Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.

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For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

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Okay? So, here we've got the new covenant described.

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What are the characteristics of this new covenant?

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According to the verses there.

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Anyone else?

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Anybody? Kyle?

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The law will be on the hearts.

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Okay.

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Law written on hearts, not on sin.

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Good.

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Others?

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Well, he talks about everybody knowing him.

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Okay.

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Knowledge of the Lord.

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And forgiveness.

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Okay.

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Forgiveness of sin.

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Least will be the greatest.

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Pardon me?

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Least will be the greatest.

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Okay. In what way? Or is that?

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The end of the thirty-fourth.

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There will know me in the least of the thirty-fourth.

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Okay.

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So it's universal.

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Okay.

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Any other characteristics of this new covenant?

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It says he'll forgive their sins.

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Okay. So, remove their sins, forgive their sins, forget sin, forget iniquity.

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Remember their sin no more.

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Really, I probably ought to.

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Remember not sin.

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A little bit different from forgetting it. Who gives that?

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Okay. Anything else?

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Law written.

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You've been there?

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Just say that he'll be their God and it'll be His people.

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Okay. So, identification with and given in a sense, giving in, will be my people.

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I will be their God.

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He says the city will be rebuilt too.

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And the city will be rebuilt. Their days are coming when the city will be rebuilt.

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It's in thirty-eight.

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Okay. Okay. Yeah. That's later on.

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That's not specifically associated here with this promise of the new covenant.

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But we're really looking here at thirty-one through thirty-four.

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Okay. So, let's just go with these characteristics here.

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The law written on their hearts, law written within them.

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The old covenant, the law was written on stone tablets.

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But here, what it's saying is that God will write it in people's heart.

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It will be internalized.

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Okay.

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In Ezekiel, Ezekiel also speaks of the new covenant.

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And he speaks of that taking place, the law being placed within them through the Holy Spirit, through the Spirit of God.

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So, whereas in the old covenant, you had God here writing laws on external tablets,

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here the Spirit will come.

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And again, this is something that Timaeus, this is a message of hope for the people, but they don't understand the full fulfillment of it.

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But from our perspective as Christians, we understand that this is the gift of the Holy Spirit within.

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That God Himself, the Spirit, dwells within.

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And the Spirit then works the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control.

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That's really the keeping of the law.

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Some of the law is to love.

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And so the Spirit now will work in this new covenant so that people now carry out the law because God is working it through them.

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There will be this knowledge of the Lord for all, from the least to the greatest.

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And the knowledge here is more than just academic head knowledge.

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Again, the Hebrew understanding of knowledge is a relationship, a binding relationship.

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And so in this new covenant, God will be intimately related, bound not just to a nation, but to all the people, the least to the greatest.

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And we think of, again, the new covenant in Jesus Christ and how the Spirit of God comes to dwell within us so that we might know the Lord and have this intimate, personal relationship with Him.

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The identification with, I will be their God and they will be my people, well, that is a continuity with the former covenant because that was announced at Sinai as well.

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Okay? So that is a continuity, but it reads its zenith, its greatest fulfillment here, as God now comes and indwells us, has union with us, and makes us His own.

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And then it ends here. All of this takes place for, I mean, this is the basis, this is the reason, I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.

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So this is the basis of it, the forgiveness of sin. Okay? Their sin will be forgiven.

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And the remembering not sin, remembrance in the Old Testament, the Hebrews, the car here to remember when God is doing the remembering, it means to act upon.

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Okay? To act upon. So He's not going to bring judgment for sin, but He's going to remove the sin, forgive their iniquity.

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Okay?

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Turn now to the New Testament, the book of Hebrews.

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Quick, maybe. On the part where it talks about knowing the Lord and then just before that it says no longer will one teach his neighbor or each his mother.

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What are the common understanding of the extent of that?

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Okay.

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Right. I think what it's really speaking of here, the fulfillment, is what we would call the priesthood of all believers.

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Because in the Old Covenant, the priests were to be the teachers of the law.

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And they were the ones who were pretty much consigned to that task of teaching the law.

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Here it's saying it's not restricted just to this group, this class, this caste, if you will, this tribe, whatever.

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But all people will know and will have such intimate knowledge of the Lord as understood here, not just head knowledge, but the relationship with the Lord.

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That all have that access to the Lord that we would call the priesthood of all believers here.

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That we now can directly learn and study from God's revealed scriptures here and teach one another.

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So it's not just certain ones teaching others, but all people have access to this and the priesthood of all believers.

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Okay. Take a look at Hebrews chapter 8.

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Okay.

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And actually in chapters 7 through 10, you have discussion of the new and better covenant of the Lord.

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And notice beginning at verse 8 of Hebrews chapter 8, you have a direct quotation of what we just read from Jeremiah chapter 31, verses 31 to 34.

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Directly quoted there.

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Okay.

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And in verse 13 then it says, in speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete.

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And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

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So, what Hebrews is really arguing here is the superiority of the covenant that Christ brings.

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And he's saying that the prophet Jeremiah recognized this and foretold this, and that Christ's coming with the blood of His covenant.

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Remember on Bondi Thursday, he took the cup of wine and said, this is my blood of the new covenant.

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There's the connection Jesus Himself directly makes.

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Okay.

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And so the book of Hebrews, which affirms the superiority of Jesus Christ and the new covenant of Christ over the old covenant, directly quotes this.

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And goes on then to identify how Jesus has established this covenant by His blood.

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And we see that especially then in chapter 9 of Hebrews, beginning with verse 15, speaking of Jesus Christ.

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Therefore, He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance,

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since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.

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So, redeems them from the transgressions, the forgiveness of sins, through the death, the blood of Jesus Christ, this foundation for the new covenant has been laid.

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And then skip to verse 18, therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood.

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We've seen that regularly with the covenants God made with His people. There's always the blood sacrifice.

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Verse 19, for when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people,

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He took the blood of calves and goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, sprinkled both the book itself and all the people.

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So this was the Sinaitic covenant, was ratified with the blood and saying, this is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.

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Okay. Verse 23, thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites,

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but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.

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For Christ has entered not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things,

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but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.

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Nor was it to offer Himself repeatedly as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not of his own,

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for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world.

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But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

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Put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, that foundation of the new covenant.

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And just as it is appointed for man to die once and after that comes judgment,

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so Christ after been offered once to bear the sins of many will appear a second time,

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not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him.

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Okay. Then he continues in chapter 10 here to spell out, further explicate the new covenant,

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and once again quotes from Jeremiah 31 towards the middle of that chapter verses 16 and 17.

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And in verse 15 attests that this is the Holy Spirit who was speaking this forth.

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And the emphasis there, verse 18, again is with the forgiveness of sin.

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So, you have the foundation laid here of the new covenant of the forgiveness of sin,

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ultimately through the sacrifice of the Messiah, Jesus.

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And as a result of that then, we have union with God, identified with God.

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He can say, I am your God, you are my people.

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Think of baptism, what he does at baptism.

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Okay. And in this relationship, all of us have immediate access to the Lord,

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the priesthood of all believers, and we can all know the Lord directly,

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not through mediators, from the least to the greatest.

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Very similar to the prophecy that Joel had that we saw yesterday in Joel chapter 2,

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that was cited by Peter at Pentecost then, that your young men, your old men,

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men and women alike will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

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And that Spirit then is written, indwells them so that the law is lived out.

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It's written in their hearts through the work of the Spirit.

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And this is the reason when you get into the New Testament

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that the understanding of the outpouring of the Spirit

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and the indwelling of the Spirit, Pentecost, takes place only after Good Friday.

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Because in the New Covenant, the gift of the Holy Spirit

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and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit takes place because of the forgiveness of sins,

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the foundation laid of the forgiveness of sins.

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And so, what you have then is Christ coming and doing the mission of atoning for our sins,

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paying for our sins.

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And after that then, you have the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

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As Jesus said, the promise from on high.

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It's all connected then to the New Covenant promise here that we see in Jeremiah.

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Well, let's just quickly finish now Jeremiah and then we'll take a break here.

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In 587, the judgment comes.

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Jerusalem is destroyed. The temple is leveled.

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The deportation of the masses is taken to Babylon here.

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As I said before, Jeremiah's life is spared

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and he's eventually recognized by the Babylonians

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to have been one who counseled the king and others to submit to the Babylonians.

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And so, they spare his life. They release him from custody.

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And he lives then among the people of Jerusalem.

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He's left behind in Jerusalem.

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And he speaks words of comfort to them during this time.

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But, when there is an assassination of the appointed governor

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of this territory now, of Jerusalem, who had been appointed by Nebuchadnezzar,

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the people flee, become refugees to Egypt.

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And Jeremiah himself said, that's not God's will.

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God's will is for you to stay.

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And you'd think that they would have learned finally here

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that Jeremiah had always been speaking the will of the Lord.

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But they paid no heed to him, so they flee and they take Jeremiah along.

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Drag him along, kicking and screaming.

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He doesn't want to go, but they, against his will, take him to Egypt.

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And it's there that he dies.

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And tradition has it that they stoned him.

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Even in Egypt, he continued to speak words that they didn't want to hear.

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And so, the people stoned him.

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So, it's a sad story, quite a burden that Jeremiah has here.

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Again, he ends up in Egypt there.

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But he was faithful to his calling, as difficult as it was.

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And you, who are going to be called into ministry,

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I can assure you, it's not always pleasant.

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There are burdens, burdens to the calling of speaking the word of the Lord.

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Speaking law to people, as well as gospel.

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And yet, faithfulness calls for us to accept the burden that God gives to us.

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It's also a great joy.

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When I first started my ministry, very early on, first couple of weeks,

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the circuit counselor called me and wanted to have lunch with me,

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and introduce himself to me, so that we could get to know one another.

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His name was Larry Rockman.

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He actually used to be the dean of students here then at the seminary as well.

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And during that lunch, I remember what he said to me.

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He said, as you start out your ministry, David, you should recognize this.

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Ministry is always a blessing.

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It is a gift from the Lord.

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But it's never easy.

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It's never easy.

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And I can attest to that as well.

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It's never easy, but it's always a blessing.

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It is a burden in one sense, but a blessed burden.

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And I'm not saying it's going to be as difficult as Jeremiah had here.

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But faithfulness calls us as Christians to carry the cross.

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But especially as those who serve the Lord in full-time ministry, it demands cross bearing.

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And yet God is always faithful.

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And He will use us for His purposes, even in difficult times, just as He did Jeremiah.