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Jeremiah's New Covenant, part 6

Jeremiah 31:21, 22 says,

²¹ “Set up for yourself roadmarks, place for yourself guideposts; direct your mind to the highway, the way by which you went. Return O virgin of Israel, return to these your cities. ²² How long will you go here and there, O faithless daughter? For the Lord has created a new thing in the earth—a woman will encompass a man.”

The prophet figuratively tells Israel to set up road signs along “the way by which you went” (into captivity), so that she would be able to find her way back. Of course, this was not to be taken literally, because Israel did not do so at the time. Neither would it make sense to try to set up road signs while attempting to reverse course.

At any rate, Israel is called both a “virgin of Israel” as well as a “faithless daughter.” In other words, Israel was both an undefiled virgin and an adulteress, seemingly at the same time. It is clear that Israel was a harlot in Hosea’s prophecy of her captivity, but in her return to God she was pictured as a virgin. Furthermore, her transformation from harlot to virgin did not depend upon her “return to these your cities.”

In her apostate condition, a relocation to the old land, i.e., God’s house, was unlawful, as she had been given a bill of divorce before being sent out of God’s house (Deuteronomy 24:1; Jeremiah 3:8). The only way God could lawfully remarry her was if she were a new creation, recognized by the law as a different woman—in other words, a virgin. She lacked the ability to transform herself into a virgin by the power of the Old Covenant. It would take a New Covenant to do this, one that was accomplished by the power of the Spirit through the New Covenant promise of God.

Hence, Israel’s “return” was not possible apart from believing the New Covenant promise of God, set forth through Abraham. Jeremiah’s language pictures a physical return, but it is metaphorical for a return to God. True repentance, as we see from the New Testament, puts one’s faith in the Son of God who was sent by the Father to fulfill God’s New Covenant oath. Acts 2:18 says,

¹⁸ Peter said to them, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Again, Peter said in Acts 4:12,

¹² And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name [Yeshua means “salvation”] under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.

John tells us in 1 John 2:23,

²³ Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also.

Therefore, as believers in Christ, we know that for a Jew to immigrate to the old land as a Zionist does not fulfill the terms that God has set forth in prophecy. The Zionist attempt to reinstate themselves as God’s wife is unlawful apart from confessing the Son of God. God allowed them to return physically only because the old land is no longer God’s house.

Zionists return to an empty house, because He forsook Jerusalem and its temple as He forsook Shiloh (Jeremiah 7:12-14). When the glory departed from Shiloh, a baby was born and named Ichabod, “the glory has departed” (1 Samuel 4:21). The glory never returned to that place but later returned to Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem. Two centuries later, Jeremiah wrote that God would treat Jerusalem in the same way, and Ezekiel saw that glory depart (Ezekiel 11:23).

When the glory returned, it came to the upper room where 120 disciples of Jesus were waiting. We are now the temple of God (1 Corinthians 3:16; Ephesians 2:20-22), a temple made of living stones. This was God’s intent from the beginning. Shiloh and Jerusalem, both types of Ichabod, were just place holders until the time came for God’s glory to inhabit human flesh.

A New Thing

Jeremiah 31:22 says that God was to create “a new thing in the earth.” This is not a renewal of something old. The New Covenant is not a renewal of the Old Covenant. It is unlike the Old Covenant, as we will see from Jeremiah 31:32. The New Covenant brings a new way of salvation, one that actually succeeds.

This New Covenant itself was set forth from the beginning, so it is not really new at all. What is actually new is Israel’s response—repentance. Jeremiah explains this as “a woman will encompass a man.” Bible commentators do not agree on the interpretation of the term “encompass.” Some say it refers to the Virgin Mary and the birth of Christ. The Revised Standard Version renders it, “a woman shall protect a man,” meaning the woman Israel would be strong enough to protect others. In my view it means, “a woman shall embrace a man,” meaning that Israel would return to her Husband (God).

The Hebrew word translated “encompass” is sabab, “to surround, encircle, turn about.” The prophet uses the term to picture an embrace, with implications of turning to God, or repentance.

For Israel to repent as a whole and return to God and to Christ is indeed “a new thing in the earth.” There has always been a remnant of grace in the earth to carry on the promises of God (Romans 11:5-7). These are the “chosen” ones, the true Israelites who carry the title Israel legitimately. The “new thing” comes with a widespread national repentance and acceptance of Jesus Christ.

Furthermore, this is not merely a promise to an ethnic group of those calling themselves Israelites. The dispersed Israelites, in fact, were stripped of their name when God divorced them. They became as the other nations who were never married to God. They became Gentiles (ethnos, “nations”), and the only way to be married to God was through Jesus Christ.

This is the same requirement for all of the other ethnicities and nations in the world. The only advantage that Jews and Israelites have had is that the oracles of God were more readily available to them before apostles arrived to teach them the gospel (Romans 3:1, 2). So the scope of God’s promises are not limited to ethnic Israelites nor to Jews. We read in 1 John 2:2,

² and He Himself [Christ] is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

So also we read that “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son” (John 3:16). This is confirmed by Jesus’ love for Samaritans, Greeks, Romans, and even Canaanites, which contrasted greatly with the Jewish attitude and culture of the day.

They Will Speak This Word

Jeremiah 31:23-26 says,

²³ Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, “Once again they will speak this word in the land of Judah and in its cities when I restore their fortunes: ‘The Lord bless you, O abode of righteousness, O holy hill.’ ²⁴ Judah and all its cities will dwell together in it, the farmer and they who go about with flocks. ²⁵ For I satisfy the weary ones and refresh everyone who languishes.” ²⁶ At this I awoke and looked, and my sleep was pleasant to me.

This was fulfilled partially during Christ’s first coming and when He ministered in the land of Judah. However, Judah’s “fortunes” were not restored at that time, because “He came to His own [nation], and these who were His own did not receive Him” (John 1:11). While Jesus came to bring about the “new thing in the earth,” it would take two comings to fully accomplish it.

Those Jews who accepted Him formed the remnant of grace in their time. Paul states further that they had the right to be called Jews, or Judeans. These were the beneficiaries of the New Covenant and of heart circumcision, who truly praised God in the way that God intended. Judah means “praise,” and only those who praise God have the right to be of the tribe or nation of Judah.

Romans 2:28, 29 tells us who is and who is not a Jew by God’s definition:

²⁸ For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. ²⁹ But he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter, and his praise [status as a Judean] is not from men, but from God.

Again, Paul confirms this in Philippians 3:3,

³ for we are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.

He then gives his fleshly credentials as a Hebrew of Hebrews but concludes that he counts it all as “dung” (KJV) or “loss” (NASB). In other words, his ethnicity did not make him “the true circumcision,” but rather it was his “worship in the Spirit of God” (that is, his praise) that gave him status with God.

The early Christians were almost entirely ethnic Jews. When the unbelieving Jews lost their status as members of Judah, the believers remained as Jews. The believers did not replace the Jews, as Replacement Theology claims. No, they continued on as Jews according to God’s definition of the term. They were the remnant of grace in whom the promises of God carried on to the present time. And as people of other nations accepted Christ and His New Covenant, they were grafted into the tree of Judah, bearing fruit unto God and praising Him in the Spirit.

Therefore, we see that the church did not replace the Jews. The church was the next generation of the remnant of grace, the small but real tribe of Judah, and the “true circumcision.”

The word which they speak, according to Jeremiah 31:23, is spoken in “the land of Judah,” not the physical land itself, but from the land of their own bodies, made of the dust of the ground. Having returned to God through Christ, God restored their fortunes through the New Covenant. From that spiritual vantage point, being fully acceptable to God, they were able to “bless” the “abode of righteousness, O holy hill.” That abode is the new temple made of living stones.

This is “Judah and all its cities” (Jeremiah 31:24), not the original land, nor the temple in Jerusalem which God forsook, pronouncing Ichabod over it. These who praise God are “Jews” whom God satisfies and refreshes (Jeremiah 31:25).

Jeremiah then awoke refreshed from a good night’s sleep (Jeremiah 31:26). This revelation had come to him in a wonderful dream.