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#DailyDevotion YHWH-Jesus Leads His People Home

#DailyDevotion YHWH-Jesus Leads His People Home

Jeremiah 31:7–9 7 Thus says the Lord: “Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob, and raise shouts for the chief of the nations; proclaim, give praise, and say, ‘O Lord, save your people, the remnant of Israel.’ 8 Behold, I will bring them from the north country and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, the pregnant woman and she who is in labor, together; a great company, they shall return here. 9 With weeping they shall come,  and with pleas for mercy I will lead them back, I will make them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path in which they shall not stumble, for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.

 

Kind of a strange prophecy for Jeremiah. What I mean is this, Israel is no more. They have been sent into exile by the Assyrians a couple of hundred years earlier and many of them were just wiped out. What was left was distributed among the nations of Assyria never to be heard from again. In Jeremiah’s day it was the Babylonians breathing down the neck of the Judahites or Jews, the southern tribes of Israel. For that reason, you would expect Judah, not Jacob, Benjamin, Judah and Levi, not Israel. For that reason I do not believe the Lord is talking about genetic Israel but the Israel of faith.

 

As seen in both Romans and Galatians, 1 Peter and not to mention Jesus mentioning making one flock from the faithful Jewish and the Gentiles who would believe in him, the remnant of Israel is the Israel of faith. Now the Israel of faith is spread all around the globe. There are Christians everywhere. To be fair, there are Jewish people practically everywhere too. But they too must be added to the Israel of faith.

 

Now this chapter is the chapter in which the New Covenant is promised.  So it goes without saying, the gathering of Israel or rather the Church isn’t based on how good they have been behaving or how well they have kept the Sabbath. No, the Lord is gathering his people from the North, South, East and West, into his kingdom purely by his grace and mercy. As he says, with weeping and pleas for mercy they shall come and be led back. Weeping in repentance and cries of mercy trusting in the promises of our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

For God is our Father, that is everyone who is born of him through the Word and the waters of Baptism. They are born from above by the will of God. He shall lead us into the promised land of the New Heavens and the New Earth. In Christ Jesus we are the firstborn of God and the firstborn of the resurrection. For all that is Christ Jesus is ours just as everything we have had is his.

 

Heavenly Father, continually lead us, your people through faith in Christ, into the kingdom you have prepared for us before he foundation of the world. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

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Rev. Guillaume J. S. Williams, Sr.

The Reverend Guillaume Williams is the Pastor of Hope Lutheran Chapel of Osage Beach, Missouri. His pastoral ministry with Hope began in 2005 where he preaches the Christ crucified.

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