Crystallization-Study of Jeremiah and Lamentations
Message Two
The Kernel of the Book of Jeremiah
Scripture Reading: Jer. 2:13; 17:9; 13:23; 23:5-6; 33:16; 31:33-34
I. The kernel of the book of Jeremiah includes three matters— what God wants from us, what we are in our fallen condition, and what Christ is to us; in order to see these three things, we need to "crack" the shell of Jeremiah and concentrate on the kernel inside, which is the complete teaching of the entire Bible.
II. What God wants from us is mentioned mainly in Jeremiah 2:13, which reveals that our God is the fountain of living waters:
A. God's intention in His economy is to be the fountain, the source, of living waters to satisfy us for our enjoyment; He wants us to take Him as the source, the fountain, of our being; the only way to take God as the fountain of living waters is to drink of Him day by day—v. 13; 1 Cor. 12:13; Rom. 11:36:
1. This requires us to call on the Lord continually (with thank-ing, rejoicing, praying, and praising) and draw water with re-joicing from Him as the fountain of living waters—Isa. 12:3-4; John 4:10, 14; Rom. 10:12; 1 Thes. 5:16-18; 4:3a.
2. Isaiah 12:3 shows that the way to receive God as our salva-tion is to draw water from the springs of salvation, that is, to drink Him—Psa. 36:8; John 4:14; 7:37; 1 Cor. 12:13; Rev. 22:17; 1 Chron. 16:8; Psa. 105:1; 116:1-4, 12-13, 17:
a. To be our salvation, the Triune God was processed to be-come the life-giving Spirit as the living water, the water of life; God's practical salvation is the processed Triune God Himself as the living water—1 Cor. 15:45; John 7:37-39; Rev. 7:17; 21:6; 22:1, 17.
b. The fountain is the source, the spring is the gushing up, the issue, of the source, and the river is the flow; the term the springs of salvation implies that salvation is the source, that is, the fountain; God as our salvation is the fountain (Isa. 12:2), Christ is the springs of salvation for our enjoy-ment and experience (John 4:14), and the Spirit is the flow of this salvation within us (7:38-39).
c. In order to enjoy salvation, we need to realize that the Lord Himself is our salvation, strength, and song and that by calling on His name we may draw water with rejoicing out of the springs of salvation—Isa. 12:2-3.
d. The way to draw water out of the springs of the divine salvation includes repent ing, calling, singing, thanking, prais ing, and making God's saving deeds known—vv. 4-6.
B. When the living water enters into us, it permeates us, passes through our entire being, and is assimilated by us, causing us to be nourished, transformed, conformed, and glorified—v. 3; John 4:10, 14; Rom. 12:2; 8:29-30.
C. "The water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life"—John 4:14b:
1. The Triune God flows in the Divine Trinity in three stages: the Father is the foun tain, the Son is the springs, and the Spirit is the river.
2. The flowing of the Triune God is "into eternal life":
a. The New Jerusalem is the totality of the eternal life, and the word into means "to become"; thus, into eternal life means to become the totality of the eternal life, the New Jerusalem.
b. By drinking the living water, we become the New Jeru-salem, the totality of the eternal life, the destination of the flowing Triune God.
D. God's goal in being the fountain of living waters is to produce the church as His increase to be His fullness for His expression; this is the heart's desire, the good pleasure, of God in His economy— Jer. 2:13; Lam. 3:22-24; 1 Cor. 1:9; Eph. 1:5, 9, 22-23.
E. Nothing apart from God as the fountain of living waters can quench our thirst and satisfy us; nothing apart from God dis-pensed into our being can make us His increase for His expres-sion—Rev. 22:1, 17.
F. We need to realize that whenever God's people are short of the Spirit of life as the water of life, they will have problems; when God's people have an abundance of the saving Spirit as the liv-ing water, their problems among themselves and with God are solved—Exo. 17:1-7; Num. 20:2-13.
III. Another aspect of the kernel of the book of Jeremiah is the exposure of what we are in our fallen condition:
A. "The heart is deceitful above all things, I And it is incurable; I Who can know it?"—17:9:
1. Even this word regarding the deceitful and incurable heart of man is related to God's economy with His dispensing; al-though man's heart is corrupt and deceitful and its condition is incurable, even such a heart can be a tablet upon which God writes His law of life—31:33; cf. 2 Cor. 3:3.
2. This reveals that God has a way to impart Himself into man; once He has come into man, God will spread from man's spirit into his heart; this is God's way, according to His economy, to deal with the heart of fallen man.
B. "Can the Cushite change his skin, I Or the leopard his spots? I Then you also may be able to do good, I Who are accustomed to do evil"—Jer. 13:23:
1. Having forsaken God as the source, the fountain of living waters (2:13), Israel became evil, having an unchangeable and sinful nature, like the Cushite's skin and the leopard's spots, which cannot be changed; this exposes the true condi-tion of fallen man.
2. As fallen human beings, in ourselves and by ourselves and with ourselves we are incur able and unchangeable—Rom. 7:18; Matt. 12:34-35; 15:7-11, 18-20; 1 Chron. 28:9; cf. Ezek. 36:26-27; Jer. 32:39-40.
C. Everyone who truly sees a vision of the Lord in His glory is en-lightened in his conscience regarding his uncleanness; how much we realize concerning ourselves depends on how much we see the Lord—Isa. 6:5; John 12:41; Job 42:5-6; cf. Luke 5:8:
1. The more we see the Lord and are exposed, the more we are cleansed; our fellowship with the Lord needs to be maintained by the constant cleansing of the Lord's blood—1 John 1:7, 9.
2. In the New Testament sense, seeing God equals gaining God in our personal expe rience; to gain God is to receive God in His element, in His life, and in His nature that we may be-come God in life and nature but not in the Godhead.
3. Seeing God transforms us (2 Cor. 3:16, 18; Matt. 5:8), because in seeing God we receive His element into us, and our old ele-ment is discharged; to see God is to be transformed into the glorious image of Christ, the God-man, that we may express God in His life and represent Him in His authority.
4. The very God whom we look at today is the consummated Spirit, and we can look at Him in our spirit; in our morning watch, even if only for fifteen or twenty minutes, we have time to be with the Lord, time to remain in the Spirit.
5. We can pray-read His Word, talk to Him, or pray to Him with short prayers; then we will have the sensation that we are receiving something of God's element, that we are absorbing the riches of God into our being; in this way we are under the divine transformation day by day; this is altogether by our looking at the very consum mated God as the Spirit in our spirit.
6. The more we see God, know God, and love God, the more we abhor ourselves and the more we deny ourselves—Job 42:6; Matt. 16:24; Luke 9:23; 14:26.
IV. The third matter in the kernel of the book of Jeremiah is what Christ is to us:
A. "Indeed, days are coming, I Declares Jehovah, I When I will raise up to David a righteous Shoot… I And this is His name by which He will be called: I Jehovah our righteousness"—23:5-6; cf. 33:16:
1. Jehovah our righteousness refers to Christ in His divinity, and a righteous Shoot, to Christ in His humanity.
2. The name here, Jehovah our righteousness, indicates that Christ, as a descendant of David, is not merely a man but is also the very Jehovah who created the heavens and the earth, selected Abraham, established the race of Israel, and was the Lord of David, the One whom he called Lord (Matt. 22:42-45; cf. Rev. 5:5; 22:16); Christ came as a Shoot of David (the son of David) who is Jehovah Himself (the Lord of David) to be the righteousness of God's people (1 Cor. 1:30):
a. With His redemption as the basis, we can believe into Christ to receive God's forgiveness (Acts 10:43), and God can justify us (Rom. 3:24, 26) and clothe us with Christ as the robe of righteousness (Isa. 61:10).
b. This opens the way for Christ as the embodiment of the Triune God (Col. 2:9) to enter into us as our life (3:4a), our inner law of life (Jer. 31:33), and our every thing in order to dispense Himself into our entire being for the accom-plishing of God's eternal economy.
B. Christ Himself is the new covenant, the new testament, of life given to us by God—Isa. 42:6; 49:8; Jer. 31:31-34; Heb. 8:8-12:
1. In Greek the same word is used for both covenant and testa-ment:
a. A covenant and a testament are the same, but when the maker of the covenant is living, it is a covenant, and when he has died, it is a testament; a testament in today's terms is a will.
b. A covenant is an agreement containing some promises to accomplish certain things for the covenanted people, while a testament is a will containing certain accomplished things that are bequeathed to the inheritor—9:16-17; cf. Deut. 11:29; 28:1, 15; Jer. 31:31-32.
2. The old covenant of the law is a portrait of God, but the new covenant of grace is the person of God—John 1:16-17:
a. When we believe into Christ, the person of this portrait comes into us, and He fulfills in us the righteous require-ments of the law as we walk according to the spirit and set our mind on the spirit—Ezek. 36:26-27; Rom. 8:2, 4, 6, 10.
b. Through His death Christ fulfilled the demands of God's righteousness accord ing to His law and enacted the new covenant (6:23; 3:21; 10:3-4; Luke 22:20; Heb. 9:16-17), and in His resurrection He became the new covenant with all its bequests (1 Cor. 15:45b; Isa. 42:6; Phil. 1:19).
c. In His ascension Christ opened the scroll of the new cove-nant concerning God's economy, and in His heavenly min-istry as the Mediator, the Executor, He is carrying out its contents—Rev. 5:1-5; Heb. 8:6; 9:15; 12:24.
d. As the Lion of the tribe of Judah, Christ overcame and de-feated Satan, as the redeeming Lamb, Christ took away the sin and sins of fallen man, and as the seven Spirits, Christ infuses us with Himself as the contents of the scroll of the new covenant—Rev. 5:5-6; John 1:29.
e. God's salvation, God's blessings, and all of God's riches have been covenanted to us, and this covenant is Christ; the reality of all the hundreds of bequests in the New Tes-tament is Christ; God has willed Himself in Christ as the Spirit to us—Gen. 22:18a; Gal. 3:14; 1 Cor. 1:30; 15:45b; Eph. 1:3; 3:8; John 20:22.
3. Our spirit is the "bank account" of all the bequests of the new covenant; by the law of the Spirit of life, all these bequests are dispensed into us and made real to us—Rom. 8:2, 10, 6, 11, 16; Heb. 8:10; John 16:13.
4. The center, the content, and the reality of the new covenant is the inner law of life (Rom. 8:2); in its essence this law refers to the divine life, and the divine life is the Triune God, who is embodied in the all-inclusive Christ and realized as the life-giving Spirit (Col. 2:9; 1 Cor. 15:45); He is the One who has been processed and consummated to be everything to His chosen people:
a. In the new covenant God puts Himself into His chosen people as their life, and this life is a law, a spontaneous power and an automatic principle—Heb. 8:10; Rom. 8:2.
b. According to its life, the law of the new covenant is the processed Triune God, and according to its function, it is the almighty divine capacity; this capacity can do every-thing in us for the carrying out of God's economy.
c. In essence this law is God in Christ as the Spirit, and in function it has the capacity to deify us (vv. 2, 10, 6, 11, 28-29); furthermore, the capacity of the inner law of life constitutes us the members of the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:27; Eph. 5:30) with all kinds of functions (Rom. 12:3-8; Eph. 4:11, 16).
d. The writing of the law of life on our heart corresponds to the New Testament teach ing concerning the spreading of the divine life from the center of our being, which is our spirit, to the circumference, which is our heart (Heb. 8:10; Rom. 8:9; Eph. 3:17); God writes His law on our heart by moving from our spirit into our heart to inscribe what He is into our being (2 Cor. 3:3).
e. Through the spontaneous, automatic function of the di-vine life within us, we have the capacity to know God, to live God, and even to become God in His life and nature but not in His Godhead so that we may become His increase, His enlarge ment, to be His fullness for His eternal expres-sion—Eph. 3:16-21.