Jeremiah [Part 7] - The Eternal Covenant with Israel

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom. Last lesson, we did the first part of chapter 31 of Jeremiah, which is one of the chapters that Christians know something about. I made a clear point that the address in this chapter is not to the church; it’s to Israel, from the beginning of the chapter to the end of the chapter.

We talked about Israel's repentance, about God's promises of hope that they will return back from the Exile and rebuild the cities, and repent themselves with humility and sincerity, and God's promise to bring them back to the land, rebuild the land, and His invitation for them to repent. And they do repent. Then we come to the second lesson from this chapter.

More promises of God, wonderful promises of God, talking about the children of Israel. In verse 24:

God is restoring the joy back to the people of Israel in chapter 31 of Jeremiah. The prophet awakes from his vision, from his sleep, and his sleep, he says, 'was sweet to me' in verse 26. And now I’m in verse 27:

Oh wow! What do we have here? We have here God changing the Torah. In the Torah, Exodus chapter 34, verse 7, it says that God is going to visit the sins of the children of the fathers and their children to the third and the fourth generation. And now, the 8th century BC, God says that’s no longer going to be the law. The law is changing. From now on, every man is responsible for his own sin, not your father, not your father’s sins, not your grandfather’s sins. Your father is not going to get punished for your sins, and you’re not going to get punished for the sins of your father. Each one shall die for his own iniquity. Verse 30 of chapter 31 of Jeremiah, that’s very interesting. If you want to learn more about this change, go to Ezekiel, chapter 18. The whole chapter deals with this change. God has a right to change the law.

We have a government that’s been elected democratically, that they want to change the laws. They want to change the laws from democracy to dictatorship, like Turkey, Hungary, Russia, China, and some other countries in the Far East. So the people are rioting. Yes, our situation is not good, but God has a right to change the law that He gave, and He’s changing the law. Now why is this important? This is an introduction to the text that the Christians love—these four verses in the middle of Jeremiah that the Christians love, starting at verse 31. We read verse 30: "Each one will pay for his own sins; the fathers will not pay for the sons, and the sons are not going to pay for each one for his own iniquity. Every man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge." Now:

After which days? The days of their exile. After He returns them back home. "...I will put my law, (my Torah, in Hebrew). I will put my Torah. Where are you going to put it? In the bookshelf? Nope. I will put my Torah where? Verse 33:

Notice this phrase. It is such an important phrase. It appears about 20 times in the prophets. People need to pay attention to that. God says in Isaiah, in Jeremiah, in Ezekiel, in Hosea, in Amos, in Joel, in the future tense. 'Hey, my dear God, what have we been till that point? Have we been chopped liver? We were your people from the days you called Abraham to leave Ur and Haran and come to the land of Canaan. We were your people when you took us out of the land of Egypt, from slavery to freedom. But what happened? Our relationship, got, spoiled a little bit, and you were not at fault. We were at fault.' But what was in the past is finished. We saw it earlier in this chapter. What’s in the future is what we’re reading now from verse 31 down.

What is God going to do in the New Covenant, in the New Testament? Who is He going to make this covenant with? Again, not with the churches, not with Christianity, with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. I will give them a new covenant, a new testament, (Brit Chadasha in Hebrew). So if you’re Baptist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Foursquare, Three Square, Five Square, whatever you want, remember Yeshua came as a Jew, was circumcised by a Jewish rabbi with a sharp knife, eight days old, 30 days later dedicated in the temple, purified in the temple, at the age of 12, when He finished 12, He came and did Bar Mitzvah in Jerusalem, in the temple. He died as king of the Jews.

Yeah, and God, through Him, has changed not the Torah, not the law, but the place where it was—it was written on stone, on top of Mount Sinai—and now it’s no longer going to be written on stone. Stone is cold. It’s going to be written on our hearts, fill us with the Holy Spirit, and that’s true for Jews and for Gentiles who gave their life to the King of Kings, to the king of the Jews, Yeshua. Jesus is His name. Yep, that’s true. God is going to write His Torah in our hearts. That’s what He says. But not only in our hearts. I like that.

I like that. The heart is an instrument of feeling emotions, but we need the mind also. You can’t study the word of God only with your heart, what you feel. No, you’ve got to use your head. We Jews know that. We learned it. We learned it from our Gentile captors in Europe, in South America, in Central America, in North America. We learned that in order to survive, it’s not enough to be in a relationship with God from the heart, but we’ve got to use the mind. And when we study the word of God, we’ve got to use our head too, not only our hearts.

So the text says, God says that to Jeremiah:

That phrase appeared earlier in the chapter, as I said. It appears 20 times in the prophets in the future tense.

For how will they know me?

Hallelujah! We ended with verse 34. That’s where the Christians end. They stop reading in verse 34. Why do they stop reading in verse 34? Because they don’t want to hear what God has to say in verse 35, 36, and 37. But I’m going to tell you what God says in those verses. Here is verse 35:

What does it say? He says that if tomorrow morning you get up and there’s no sun rising in the sky and the night comes and there is no moon and stars, that’s when God is going to reject Israel. But I’m sorry. I’ve traveled the world over several times in the last years. More than 50 countries. I have been close to the North Pole in Lapland, in Finland, and there, the summer, the sun doesn’t set. It’s there. And at night, in the winter, there are the northern lights, but there’s still moon and sky and stars. Those are witnesses. Every night when they come out, the moon and the stars, you should remember God is still the God of Israel. He is still never rejected the Jewish people.

Supposed doctrine that the churches teach. Yes, never rejected the Jewish people.

That’s verse 36 of Jeremiah 31.

And He continues the prophecy in chapter 31. I’m going to end soon this second lesson from chapter 31, which is something unusual in this series.

Hallelujah! Jerusalem is going to be here still, no matter how many enemies we have around us, no matter how many atomic bombs Iran might have. Jerusalem is still going to be here. Well, maybe Beijing, New York, Buenos Aires, Mexico City are not going to be there anymore forever, that says the Lord.