WWUTT 2529 God's Promise to Restore the Land (Jeremiah 32:16-44)

The Lord God had Jeremiah buy a field, and the reason for this purchase was to show that God was going to restore his people back to their land. We have the promise of a land as well when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the Word. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we feature New Testament Study, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday.

Now here's your teacher, Pastor Gate.

Jeremiah’s Field Purchase as a Sign of Restoration

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the book of Jeremiah, we come back to chapter 32, picking up where we left off last week. We're in a section of Jeremiah that's called the Book of Consolation. This is where God told Jeremiah to write things down in a book that would be an encouragement to Israel and Judah who had been sent into exile.

Though God was punishing them because of their sin, because they rebelled against God and worshiped false gods, he yet was going to fulfill his promise to the people of Judah and restore them back to their land.

So God has Jeremiah go back to Anathoth. This is where his family was from, and he bought a field from his cousin Hanamel. This was done in the presence of many witnesses. They saw the exchange of money, the signing of deeds.

Why would God have Jeremiah do this when the land was basically worthless at this point? Everybody had been sent into exile. Nobody was going to come back and occupy this land again from Judah or Israel.

Well, this was so they would know God's promise that had been given to them. He would restore them to their land. They would occupy this land again. They would buy and sell and trade. They would plant crops and harvest.

They would raise livestock on the land. And God was, in a sense, signing this promise to Israel and Judah by having Jeremiah sign this deed for the land he was purchasing from his cousin and purchasing it from a relative and not from a foreigner to show the land that was promised to the descendants of Abraham would still belong to the descendants of Abraham.

So let's pick up where we left off with Jeremiah praying to the Lord after this thing was done, that God through this purchase was showing houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.

So I'm going to start reading here in verse 16 and go through verse 25. Here are the word of the Lord. After I had given the deed of purchase to Baruch the son of Neriah, I prayed to the Lord, saying, Ah, Lord God, it is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm.

Nothing is too hard for you. You show steadfast love to thousands, but you repay the guilt of fathers to their children after them. Oh, great and mighty God, whose name is the Lord of hosts, great in counsel and mighty in deed, whose eyes are open to all the ways of the children of man, rewarding each one according to his ways and according to the fruit of his deeds.

You have shown signs and wonders in the land of Egypt and to this day in Israel and among all mankind and have made a name for yourself as at this day, you brought your people Israel out of the land of Egypt with signs and wonders, with a strong hand and an outstretched arm and with great terror.

And you gave them this land, which you swore to their fathers to give them a land flowing with milk and honey. And they entered and took possession of it, but they did not obey your voice or walk in your law.

They did nothing of all you commanded them to do. Therefore you have made all this disaster come upon them. Behold, the siege mounds have come up to the city to take it. And because of sword and famine and pestilence, the city is given into the hands of the Chaldeans who are fighting against it.

What you spoke has come to pass and behold, you see it. Yet you, oh Lord God, have said to me, buy the field for money and get witnesses. Though the city is given into the hands of the Chaldeans. So not only has the land been invaded, it was invaded first by the Assyrians and then by the Chaldeans, but even the capital city itself, Jerusalem has been invaded.

The siege works have been laid against it. The walls have been torn down. Everything is being carried away. So the land has been left desolate. The capital city has been conquered. Why would Jeremiah go and buy a plot of land?

It was to show that God would restore them to the land as he was promising that he would.

Do.

Remember what we read back in chapter 29, the very famous verse, Jeremiah 29 11, I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, a plan to prosper and not harm you, but to give you a hope in a future.

And after that promise, he is signing the deed, so to speak, putting his putting his signature on the promise by having his prophet go and purchase this land. And Jeremiah rejoices in this. We've seen other occasions where God had told Jeremiah to go and deliver a message and he complained about it.

But here in this occasion, it's very different. Jeremiah is filled with reverence and we have this, this exalting of God that he does here at the very beginning of this prayer. This is one sentence that goes from verses 17 through 19, where he is exalting the Lord.

He is.

He is giving him great praise. Ah, Lord God, it is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you now. It's going to be said later on when God responds to Jeremiah that, again, God can do anything, but we still need to understand something about the character of God.

God is never going to do anything that contradicts his character. So he is never going to do evil. God is not evil. So he is not going to do anything sinful that would contradict who he is as the holy and good God.

So there are certainly things that God won't do or cannot do because it would be completely contrary to who he is. But nothing is too hard for him. He will accomplish anything he has said that he will accomplish.

And this is being done contrary to any human expectations. Remember what I've said before about this prophecy that is being given to these people in exile that they would come back to this land and occupy it again, and it would happen after a period of 70 years.

This is a ridiculously specific prophecy. I mean, for God to say to this people, not only will you come out of exile, but you'll come back to this land, which right now is worth nothing because it's been decimated by other nations that have come trampling through and have conquered and have devoured the Assyrians themselves, who were described as being locusts.

So even though there's nothing left to the land, God is saying, you're going to come back to it. The very land that you previously occupied, that against all odds, no people would ever be able to come back to getting out of captivity, being able to fight back their enemies, which that happens with Nehemiah when he comes back leading the people.

You have the picture of Nehemiah building the walls with Jerusalem and all of his builders having swords in their hands. So you've probably seen various logos of like a trowel and a sword. That's the logo that that founders ministry uses that they've designed.

So you have the building of the wall and the holding of a sword in the other hand. And Nehemiah is given power to be able to fight back his enemies while the Jews are rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem.

Against all odds, these things come together and God sees them to succeed. It is God's promise. He will ensure that it will happen. So that prophecy in itself is remarkable that the people of Israel and Judah are promised they would get to come back to their land.

You will occupy this land again. It seems like it would be impossible for anybody to come back when you would now even be foreigners back in your own land because you hadn't been here for so long. But God was going to give it to them and they would reoccupy this place.

God’s Judgment on Jerusalem and the Wickedness of Judah

And so the word of the Lord comes to Jeremiah after Jeremiah prays this exalting prayer unto God. God answers in verse 26, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah. Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh.

Is anything too hard for me? Therefore, thus says the Lord, behold, I am giving this city into the hands of the Chaldeans and into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and he shall capture it.

Now, let me stop there. So though God is promising to restore the land. You'd be thinking to yourself, well, this is over, then everything that's going to happen at the hands of our enemies has been completed and we're done.

Nope, still something else that's going to happen. The king of the Chaldeans, the king of the Babylonians, is going to come against Jerusalem and conquer it. It's going to be successful, he will overthrow the city, so it's making it look like it's even against it's even more greatly against the odds that we're going to be able to come back to this place and reoccupy the land.

Even our city is gone. Even after God said we were going to be restored to this land, Jerusalem was taken away. There was still more that was to be devoured off of the land. We'll have even less to come back to when we're able to come back to it.

But this is to show that it was all by God's hand and not by any man's, even when Cyrus, when he would become the king of Persia and he would be the guy that issues that edict that sends all the Jews back into their land and even supplies for them.

Even when Cyrus does all of this. It wasn't by Cyrus's hand that they were blessed back to their land, it was still by God's hand that he would even move in Cyrus's heart to restore the Jews back to their land and provide for them whatever they needed to restore their land.

Everything has been laid waste so that the people would see it was not by the hand of any man, but by the hand of God. That we were able to come back here, if you remember the story and judges of Gideon and his three hundred.

The Lord continued to whittle down the number of soldiers that Gideon was going to be able to take against the Midianites. And the reason why God continued to do this was so that the people would see it was not by the hand of man, but by the hand of God, that they were successful in battle all the way down to three hundred troops fighting tens of thousands.

And they were successful because God made them to be successful. So even here with the land being desolate, with Jerusalem itself being taken over, this was to show that if the Jews are ever going to come back to this land, it's going to have to be by the hand of God.

It would not be by any other means or circumstance, but that God had ordained it and would deliver them. So picking up in verse twenty nine, the Chaldeans who are fighting against this city shall come and set the city on fire and burn it with the houses on whose roofs offerings have been made to bail and drink offerings have been poured out to other gods to provoke me to anger.

So you see what the Lord is doing here is purifying the city. I'm going to allow a wicked, sinful people to come in here and light it on fire that it may be purified from all of the abominations that were being done in it.

He would torch the city, it would have to be completely rebuilt. Verse thirty, for the children of Israel and the children of Judah have done nothing but evil in my sight from their youth. The children of Israel have done nothing but provoke me to anger by the work of their hands, declares the Lord.

This city has aroused my anger and wrath from the day it was built to this day so that I will remove it from my sight because of all the evil of the children of Israel and their children of Judah that they did to provoke me to anger their kings and their officials, their priests and their prophets, the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

You know, I will be honest, I get a little annoyed by some Christians were with a particular mindset of a specific eschatology that will look at all the things that are happening in the world and in the United States of America in particular, sticking with our culture specifically.

And they will say, we are going to win. This is going to be a Christian nation. It will be overthrown. Christianity will spread. And it's just like, have you not seen the wickedness that exists in this land?

You think God would actually just let this go? Judgment will come upon this nation. It will come. And the only way to be saved from the judgment that will befall it. Is to have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And is the only way to be saved from the wrath and the judgment of God, what's going on in the United States of America is even worse than what was happening in Jerusalem at that time. God will bring judgment upon the wicked.

And this is why the message of the gospel needs to be out there, because the only way that a person can be saved. Is through the hearing of the gospel of Jesus Christ to turn from their sin to the Lord Jesus Christ and live.

And we need to be speaking the truth in love, warning them in love that judgment is coming and you stand condemned unless you turn to Christ who died as an atoning sacrifice for sins, who rose again from the dead so that whoever believes in him will escape from the fires of God's judgment and instead be reconciled to God and have everlasting life with him.

The Lord speaks here about all the things that Judah did to provoke him to anger. Verse 33, they have turned to me their back and not their face, and though I have taught them persistently, they have not listened to receive my instruction.

I just preached in a sermon recently about how our culture in particular has had the word of God right at our fingertips. It's more it's more readily accessible to us now than it has been in any previous generation.

We have such easy access to God's word and how many Bibles we own and how cheap they are, how easy they are to find. If you've got a smartphone or a computer, you've got free text right there in front.

Of you.

I mean, you got to pay for your phone or you got to pay for the service. But beyond that, you can pull up apps that you don't have to pay for. And there's the word of God on your phone in your pocket whenever you want it.

Right now, as I'm teaching to you, I'm teaching from a computer screen. I'm reading the word of God on a computer because it stands more upright. It's more directly in front of my eyes this way. And it's free.

You know, I just type in Jeremiah 32. It comes right up for me. How much access we have to read God's word, what he had revealed through his prophets and apostles. And yet we live in a culture that is extremely biblically ignorant.

Just as Jesus had said to the Pharisees, have you not read so he could just as easily say that to this culture? And it would probably be even more indicting because, as Peter said in second Peter chapter one, we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed.

We have no excuse not to know the gospel. And so the Lord will bring judgment on a people that. Refuse to know God persistently said to Judah to turn back to him, and they have not listened to receive my instruction.

So the Lord is stretching out his hands, even to this culture, that they would turn to him. And when they don't, he will pour out judgment on it. Verse thirty four, they set up their abominations in the house that is called by my name to defile it.

Worshiping idols, even in the house of God, they built the high places of Baal in the valley of the son of Hinnom to offer up their saw their sons and daughters to Moloch. Child sacrifice happens even in our culture today, though I did not command them, the Lord said, nor did it enter into my mind that they should do this abomination to cause Judah to sin.

I've heard that verse used against any sort of concept of God having sovereignly decreed or ordained all that's going to come to pass. Oh, yeah. We'll look at all this wickedness that happened in Judah.

And God said of it that I did not command them, nor did it enter into my mind that they should do this abomination.

Right.

That's exactly correct. God did not command them to burn their sons or daughters as sacrifices unto God. That is not what the law of God said, even though many Jews thought that's what they.

Were doing.

This is what Yahweh wants, and we're lifting up these sacrifices to him. But that was an abomination to God. And he will utterly destroy the city because they did this thing. And all of what is transpiring, we read in the book of Isaiah, is happening by the Lord's hand, even bringing the Babylonians against Judah to punish them.

It's all by God's hand. Every bit of it, including bringing them back to the place from which they were driven. And so the Lord gives this promise. And here's how we close chapter 32. Now, therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel concerning this city of which you say it is given into the hand of the king of Babylon by sword, by famine and by pestilence.

Behold, I will gather them from all the countries to which I drove them in my anger and my wrath and in great indignation. I will bring them back to this place and I will make them dwell in safety and they shall be my people and I will be their God.

We have the same thing said of the church in Revelation chapter 22. I will give them one heart and one way that they may fear me forever for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant that I will not turn away from doing good to them.

And I will put the fear of me in their hearts that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness with all my heart and with all my soul.

And this is even types and shadows pointing toward the church that God is even making this promise with. When we put our trust in Jesus Christ, he does not drive us from his presence, but we are eternally secure in the hand of God.

As Jesus said in John 10, my father who gives them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of my father's hand. Going on to verse 42, for thus says the Lord, just as I have brought all this great disaster upon this people, so I will bring upon them all the good that I promised them.

Fields shall be bought in this land of which they are saying, it is a desolation without man or beast. It is given into the hand of the Chaldeans. Fields shall be bought for money and deeds shall be signed and sealed in witness just as what had happened with Jeremiah buying the field from his cousin.

In the land of Benjamin, in the places about Jerusalem and in the cities of Judah, in the cities of the hill country, in the cities of the Shafila and in the cities of the Negev, for I will restore their fortunes, declares the Lord.

The Heavenly Promised Land in Christ

And so God has promised to us a land as well, but not one that is here on earth. It is the land above in glory. Our promised land is with Christ forever in his eternal kingdom. And we will inherit that land.

All who are in Christ Jesus will receive it. Hebrews chapter 11 says that the faithful who were promised these things, even that they would come back to the land, many of them were not able to receive the thing that was promised, but they desired a better country.

That is a heavenly one. And so God is pleased to be called their God and he has prepared for them a city. And so God has done for each and every one of us. Hold fast to Christ. My friends, we will go through trouble in this world.

Sometimes the trouble that we go through has nothing to do with our sin. It's just because it's the trouble of the world, but we have the promise of deliverance out of this place and into a perfect kingdom that never ends where these troubles will be no more.

And our access into that kingdom is by faith in Jesus Christ who died for us and rose again so that all who believe in him will be saved. Heavenly father, I thank you for what we have read. And I pray that we do know and understand that you are a holy God.

You will not just shrug at sin. You will not just ignore it, but judgment is coming upon the wicked. We all deserve that judgment. But the only way to be saved, you provided for through your son, Jesus Christ, who died for our sins.

So may we put our trust in him and in knowing Christ and clothed in his righteousness. Teach us to walk in his ways today. Forgive us our sins, lead us in paths of righteousness. For his name sake, it's in Jesus name we pray.

Amen.

When we understand the text.