but were never such by nature. In confirmation of this, please read Romans 2:17 — 29, Romans 9:1-8 and 21-23 and again what He says in Romans 11:1-7 and 17-27 about the elect or chosen segment of the nation, which, in God's sight, are the real and only true Israelites of the seed of Jacob. The bad figs element of the nation have always been and will always be an offence to God and a curse to mankind and the chosen and sanctified good figs have been a credit to God, as the exiled believers like Daniel and his kind were, and a blessing to mankind, even as they were then, as well as in Esther's time later, and when they first translated the Old Testament into Greek and gave the world the septuagint translation, which even the Lord Jesus often quoted, instead of the Hebrew original. This same special line of perpetual real Israelites was seen again in the apostles and first church members who took the Gospel again to the Gentiles, while the bad figs basket of Jews continued to do all they could to be a more poisonous curse to the human race.
Now, let us see what the precious promises of our lesson Scriptures said to the godly tenth of the nation in Jeremiah's day. We see in chapter 18 that they consisted of salvaged pieces of a shattered, former vessel which the Potter had deliberately broken. He says He broke it for two reasons, first because it was not responsive to His plan and second, that He might make a very different vessel. History has served as a wonderful commentary and confirmation of- this twofold explanation in the potter's house. God did shatter the first vessel of national Israel with a terrifying work of finality. The nation never recovered its previous form again and, we believe, it never will. Scripture confirms this in many ways; in figurative declarations such as the symbolic cursed fig tree of Matthew 21:19, the parabolic vineyard of Matthew 21:33-46, the parable of the unjust steward of Luke 16:1-18 and the picture of the elder brother of Luke 15:25-32, left standing in sulking misery outside the circle of godly rejoicing. We have the same awful fact depicted in Galations 4:22-31, in the spectacle of Hagar and Ishmael representing enslaved and disenfranchised Israel, cast off with no hope of ever being reinstated even to a servant's place. The same terrible fate is shown in 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 where
wrath is said to be set to flow to the uttermost on the Christ-rejecting Jews, because they go on always tilling up the measure of their rejected forefathers' sins. On the other and brighter side of the potter's picture, we see the other vessel in spiritual Israel, first in the lands of banishment, then in the godly of the remnant that returned, like Ezra, Nehemiah, Joshua, the High Priest, Zerubbabel, Zechariah, Haggai, the Maccabees, between the Old and New Testaments, the like of the parents of John the Baptist, Simeon and Anna and later the apostles and martyrs of the early churches.
Note further these good pledges of grace. In Jeremiah 23; 1-8 God tells how His scattering of the obedient transplants was a means of taking His chosen people away from the false shepherds and impending destruction of Jerusalem. Jerusalem, having been so deeply poisoned with the dregs of deception, was not in the future to be a fruitful seed bed for good fruit. The chief men of the fruitful future would not originate in Jerusalem, but in Babylon, Persia, Galilee, Tarsus and many other places from which all the great of God's making would originate.
In preparation for this and as an expression of their confidence in the unfailing certainty of God's faithfulness, they were to build houses they were to buy land in the foreign lands, they were to raise children there and were to pray for and bless people with whom they shared in the places of their adoption. They were to
prepare for the time, after seventy years, when God would restore many of them to Jerusalem and, in the meantime, they were to avoid the sins of Babylon, because those evils were to be punished with everlasting destruction. See Jeremiah 29:4-14 and chapter 25, 8-14. The parallel passage in Ezekiel 14: 22 and 23 tells that the chosen and protected transplants will be a source of comfort and hope in the lands of their sojourn and would see and show clear evidence in proof of the tightness of God's judgements upon the generations upon which He spent His fury when He tore down the old institutions of the Kingship and freedom that Israel never recovered again as a nation.
But obviously, these visions and promises included much more in time and blessings than that which was planned for the seventy years of Jerusalem's shame. The new vessel foreseen in the potter's house was to include faithful shepherds and spiritual priests, according to chapters 23:1-8 and 29; 4-14. To them and of them The Branch', the Lord Jesus, would come and with Him eternal benefits would be granted to fellow figs among all nations. Many New Testament passages, such as Hebrews 8:10; 12:24 & 13: 20 go back to Jeremiah 31: 31-34 and the description there of the covenant that would replace the faulty agreement made by the Nation in Moses' day, and they tell us clearly that Jeremiah foresaw and described the whole spiritual Kingdom of God, made up of believers of all nations and all time and dependent wholly upon the merits of Christ and the heart-changing work of the Holy Spirit as the basis of their hope for the eternal future. The establishing of credit by Christ and the covenant commitments of the Holy Spirit were the basis of all the promised security and blessings that could not be forfeited by those chosen for the present and eternal Kingdom, which was and is to be made up of responsive Jews and transformed Gentiles of all nations. The holy nation described by Peter in 1 Peter 2:9 and by John in Revelation 7: 9-17 is the same as Christ told about in Matthew 21:43 as the heirs and recipients of the kingdom rights that were taken forever from Israel as a nation, when the Gospel went from Jerusalem, as God said it would, as seen in Acts 8: 3 and 4.
We who know that we are of the Lord's chosen because of the fulfilling of His Covenant promises in our experience, have received ‘The Branch’, with all His merits and credit. We have the Spirit whereby we have confirmation of our household title and right in the family of God. We are not dependent on an external sign, like circumcision, and a natural family pedigree to confirm our claims about our being the children of God, since we have His Spirit within us and know what it is to have Him incite within us that impulse which impels us to cry 'Abba, Father,' to God and not to sticks and stones or to sinful men in special, deceptive garb and office. We are not dependent on a covenant which relies on one part upon sinful failures for its fulfilment, but upon the covenant in which Jeremiah, David, Abraham and all informed believers of all ages rejoiced, a covenant that is established in all points and unchangeably sure, because it relies on one side upon the unshakeable faithfulness of God, the Father, and on the other side wholly and eternally upon the Godman, Christ Jesus, and His ongoing and never-changing priesthood.
'Upon a life I did not live, Another's life, Another's death, Upon a death I did not die, I rest for all eternity.'
May God make us and many others to rejoice with new and fuller joy in the blessed fact that 'With Jesus my Saviour, I'm a child of the King.'
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