Doom might be on the horizon.
You can find voices in the disciplines of politics, economics, and the environment who are predicting doom for various reasons.
Franklin Graham is predicting spiritual doom. He was quoted after the election as saying that the United States in “on a path of destruction” for shaking our fist at God.
If these voices are correct and doom is in our immediate future we should pay close attention to chapter thirty of Jeremiah.
Doom was the imminent future of the nation of Judah. In just a short time the armies of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon would burn Jerusalem and destroy the Temple.
Doom was the far future of the nation of Judah. Much of what we will read in this chapter looks beyond our own time to the Great Tribulation.
It was all doom – but no gloom. Chapters thirty through thirty-three are the most hopeful four chapters in all of the prophecies of Jeremiah.
They focus our attention on the bigger picture of the mission of the Jews and the certainty of the completion of their mission thanks to the intervention of God.
How are they hopeful for us? If or when the days of doom set in we, too, will need to look beyond them to the time we will look upon The Lord, Jesus Christ.
I’ll organize my thoughts around two points: #1 “Days Are Coming” In Which Your Hope Is To Look Beyond Them, and #2 “Days Are Coming” In Which Your Joy Will Be To Look Upon Him.
#1 “Days Are Coming” In Which
Your Hope Is To Look Beyond Them
(v1-17)
I don’t want to freak anyone out but regardless whether or not the United States is doomed, we are all doomed. Even in the best of times we each face a personal future in which we will grow old, get sick, and die.
Unless we are raptured or die suddenly we will find ourselves looking beyond our fleeting days upon this earth and forward into eternity.
Joni Earekson Tada, no stranger to suffering, said, “The best that we can hope for in this life is a knothole peek at the shining realities ahead. Yet [that] glimpse is enough.”
God gave Judah their knothole glimpse in chapters thirty through thirty three.
Jeremiah 30:1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying,
Jeremiah 30:2 “Thus speaks the LORD God of Israel, saying: ‘Write in a book for yourself all the words that I have spoken to you.
Jeremiah 30:3 For behold, the days are coming,’ says the LORD, ‘that I will bring back from captivity My people Israel and Judah,’ says the LORD. ‘And I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it.’ ”
That’s it. There’s your hope. “The days are coming” when God would restore them. Mean time things were going to be tough.
Let’s summarize the kind of ‘looking beyond’ that God was encouraging. The prophet Habakkuk said of those same days,
Habakkuk 3:17 Though the fig tree may not blossom, Nor fruit be on the vines; Though the labor of the olive may fail, And the fields yield no food; Though the flock may be cut off from the fold, And there be no herd in the stalls –
Habakkuk 3:18 Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.
Habakkuk 3:19 The LORD God is my strength; He will make my feet like deer’s feet, And He will make me walk on my high hills.
If you are expecting something more than a look through the knothole then you’re going to be in trouble when trouble comes.
In our cases, as Christians, we’re excited for the place Jesus has gone to prepare for us, the mansion He’s building for us, and we’re looking forward to His coming to bring us there.
Jeremiah 30:4 Now these are the words that the Lord spoke concerning Israel and Judah.
Jeremiah 30:5 “For thus says the LORD: ‘We have heard a voice of trembling, Of fear, and not of peace.
Jeremiah 30:6 Ask now, and see, Whether a man is ever in labor with child? So why do I see every man with his hands on his loins Like a woman in labor, And all faces turned pale?
Jeremiah 30:7 Alas! For that day is great, So that none is like it; And it is the time of Jacob’s trouble…
Since you are a careful reader you noticed that verse four mentioned both “Israel and Judah.” The northern kingdom of Israel had been overrun by the Assyrians more than a hundred years before. Yet God was talking to both Israel and Judah.
It let’s us know that the trouble God was discussing wasn’t just the Babylonians. No, He’s looking further into the future and talking about a united Israel going through the Great Tribulation.
We know that God was talking about the Great Tribulation because Jesus also described it like suffering with labor pains. Additionally He said it would be a time unlike any other time of trouble ever on the earth.
It is here called “the time of Jacob’s trouble,” meaning that although it will come upon the whole world of men it is especially designed for the Jews to get them to return to their God.
Jeremiah 30:7 … But he shall be saved out of it.
Jeremiah 30:8 ‘For it shall come to pass in that day,’ Says the LORD of hosts, ‘That I will break his yoke from your neck, And will burst your bonds; Foreigners shall no more enslave them.
Jeremiah 30:9 But they shall serve the LORD their God, And David their king, Whom I will raise up for them.
The nation of Israel will survive the Great Tribulation and be elevated as the chief nation on the earth. Never again will they be persecuted and enslaved by other nations.
David – the real, resurrected David from the Old Testament – will be their king.
Jeremiah 30:10 ‘Therefore do not fear, O My servant Jacob,’ says the LORD, ‘Nor be dismayed, O Israel; For behold, I will save you from afar, And your seed from the land of their captivity. Jacob shall return, have rest and be quiet, And no one shall make him afraid.
Jeremiah 30:11 For I am with you,’ says the LORD, ‘to save you; Though I make a full end of all nations where I have scattered you, Yet I will not make a complete end of you. But I will correct you in justice, And will not let you go altogether unpunished.’
It’s clear these verses are about ultimate outcomes – about the future beyond our own times. God references the Jews being scattered not just to Babylon but to many nations; and He indicates a final judgment upon those nations by saying “I make a full end of nations.”
In the Gospel of Matthew this judgment is described for us in chapter twenty-five at the Second Coming of Jesus.
The Great Tribulation will be necessary to “correct [the Jews] in justice].” Like the Babylonian invasion and captivity it will be a necessary discipline to turn God’s people back to Him, to get them to acknowledge the Messiah they crucified in His first coming.
Jeremiah 30:12 “For thus says the LORD: ‘Your affliction is incurable, Your wound is severe.
Jeremiah 30:13 There is no one to plead your cause, That you may be bound up; You have no healing medicines.
Jeremiah 30:14 All your lovers have forgotten you; They do not seek you; For I have wounded you with the wound of an enemy, With the chastisement of a cruel one, For the multitude of your iniquities, Because your sins have increased.
Jeremiah 30:15 Why do you cry about your affliction? Your sorrow is incurable. Because of the multitude of your iniquities, Because your sins have increased, I have done these things to you.
Jeremiah 30:16 ‘Therefore all those who devour you shall be devoured; And all your adversaries, every one of them, shall go into captivity; Those who plunder you shall become plunder, And all who prey upon you I will make a prey.
These verses make one point. Apart from God’s intervention to discipline Israel she would have perished long ago; and she would perish in the future.
Jeremiah 30:17 For I will restore health to you And heal you of your wounds,’ says the LORD, ‘Because they called you an outcast saying: “This is Zion; No one seeks her.” ‘
Wait a minute. Didn’t we just read that they were “incurable?” God was simply but powerfully saying that His people had gotten, and will get, to a point in which they can only be saved by His extreme measures. Nothing else, no one else, could save them as a people.
Let’s say gangrene sets into your wound. Unless the doctors cut-off your arm or your leg above the infection, that gangrene is going to spread until you are dead.
Yes, amputation is extreme, but it stops the spread of disease and it saves you. Likewise spiritual amputation is sometimes a viable option.
Was the Babylonian captivity extreme? Will the Great Tribulation be extreme? Yes, but both were necessary. “Because of the multitudes of [their] iniquities” God had to amputate to save them in the sixth century. And He’ll have to do it again in the near future.
Jesus promised He would come for us, to take us to Heaven. It could happen any moment. As we wait moment-by-moment, some of us suffer and some of us die. But God has given us enough of a glimpse through the knothole to the other side to look beyond all earthly sorrow and suffering to the hope of His appearing.
#2 “Days Are Coming” In Which
Your Joy Will Be To Look Upon Him
(v18-24)
The remaining verses look a bit further. They look past the Second Coming of Jesus and into what we call the Millennial Kingdom – the rule and reign of Jesus upon planet earth for one thousand years prior to eternity.
Jeremiah 30:18 “Thus says the LORD: ‘Behold, I will bring back the captivity of Jacob’s tents, And have mercy on his dwelling places; The city shall be built upon its own mound, And the palace shall remain according to its own plan.
Jeremiah 30:19 Then out of them shall proceed thanksgiving And the voice of those who make merry; I will multiply them, and they shall not diminish; I will also glorify them, and they shall not be small.
Jeremiah 30:20 Their children also shall be as before, And their congregation shall be established before Me; And I will punish all who oppress them.
Central Israel is now under rocket fire for the first time since Saddam Hussein launched Scud missiles into Tel Aviv during the first Gulf War. Israel has been told to prepare for seven weeks of war by her leaders.
Iran, other Islamic nations, and many terror groups, are all sworn to the utter annihilation of Israel.
Israel will never be displaced again; and she cannot be eliminated. To her enemies God says, “I will punish all those who oppress them.”
Jeremiah 30:21 Their nobles shall be from among them, And their governor shall come from their midst; Then I will cause him to draw near, And he shall approach Me; For who is this who pledged his heart to approach Me?’ says the LORD.
Someone is described as drawing near to God, as approaching God. He is said to have pledged His heart in His approach God.
I think it’s Jesus. When did Jesus “pledge His heart” to approach God? I can’t say exactly what is intended but I think first He pledged His heart in eternity past, before the universe was spoken into existence by God. Seeing a race of lost, perishing sinners, Jesus pledged His heart to come as a man, to be the God-man, Who would save us.
He pledged His heart again, did He not, in the Garden of Gethsemane when He said to His Father, “Nevertheless, not my will, but Yours be done,” then endured the Cross so that being lifted-up He might draw all men to Himself, that He might be the Savior of all men – especially those that believe.
In the Revelation we see Him in Heaven step forward to approach God to take from His Father the scroll with the seven seals. As those seals are opened, one-by-one, they take us through the Tribulation to the return of Jesus to rule and reign over the earth.
Jeremiah 30:22 ‘You shall be My people, And I will be your God.’
Jeremiah 30:23 Behold, the whirlwind of the LORD – Goes forth with fury, A continuing whirlwind; It will fall violently on the head of the wicked.
God’s mission for Israel in human history was for them to be His people in order to show the other nations, peoples, tribes, and tongues He is God. They failed again and again but God refused, and He refuses, to abandon them or the mission. Thus the “whirlwind,” the Great Tribulation, “will fall violently upon the head of the wicked” as God preserves the Jews through those years to bring them to repentance and complete their mission.
Jeremiah 30:24 The fierce anger of the LORD will not return until He has done it, And until He has performed the intents of His heart. In the latter days you will consider it.
Another translation reads, “The wrath of the Lord will not be turned back till he has done, till he has put into effect, the purposes of his heart: in days to come you will have full knowledge of this.”
It’s a strong statement that God overrules human history and will, through the day of His wrath, accomplish the purposes of His heart to save Israel and, through her, multitudes of Gentiles and then establish the kingdom on earth.
It all culminates, does it not, in the full restoration of face-to-face fellowship with the living God. The days are coming when you and I will have the joy of looking upon Him – of looking full in His wonderful face.
I don’t know what our nation, or our church, or my family, or myself, will face in the coming hours or days or months or years we await the imminent return of Jesus.
I know I will face Him – and that is all I need to know until that day comes.