Jeremiah 24:7

Jeremiah 24:7

The Bible says in Jeremiah 24:7, “And I will give them an heart to know me, that I am the LORD: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God: for they shall return unto me with their whole heart.” This is a verse that tells us how a human being becomes rightly-related to God. The first truth to notice is that salvation is initiated by God. Salvation is of the Lord. No one gets saved unless Jesus visits them to reveal Himself to them. The Lord said, “I will give them an heart to know me.” The Lord gives salvation. Salvation is a free gift from God. He said, “I will give them…” That exact same truth is told to us in Romans 6:23 that says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

God also said in Jeremiah 24:7, “I will give them an heart to know me.” Salvation involves the heart of a person. This is in contrast to religious ceremonies. There is no religious ceremony and there is no water baptism that can give you salvation. It is an absolute requirement to have a change in heart, and only Jesus can give you that change. God said, “I will give them an heart to know me.” Salvation is when a person comes to know the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior. True Christianity is not a religion: it is a relationship between a person and Jesus Christ. To be born-again is a life-changing spiritual experience in which a person who is totally ignorant of God is touched by God Himself and given a new heart that believes in Jesus Christ.

God also said in Jeremiah 24:7, “they shall be my people, and I will be their God.” One of the results of being given this new heart from God, is that we become part of God’s people. We become part of the family of God. We have the same destiny as the rest of the family: we will all end up in heaven with Jesus our Savior. We have the same care given to each of us as the rest of the family: just as God gave us all a new heart, He will guide, protect, provide, and use each us in a very similar way based upon the same spiritual principles. In other words we will all be carried in the arms of Jesus through this life and all the way to heaven. What a contrast this is to what ultimately happens to those who do not have a change of heart and do not know God. This terrible destiny of the unbelievers is symbolized by what happened to the Israelites in the time of Jeremiah and it says in Jeremiah 24:8-10, “And as the evil figs, which cannot be eaten, they are so evil; surely thus saith the LORD, So will I give Zedekiah the king of Judah, and his princes, and the residue of Jerusalem, that remain in this land, and them that dwell in the land of Egypt: And I will deliver them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth for their hurt, to be a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse, in all places whither I shall drive them. And I will send the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, among them, till they be consumed from off the land that I gave unto them and to their fathers.”

The Bible says in Jeremiah 25:1-7, “The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, that was the first year of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon; The which Jeremiah the prophet spake unto all the people of Judah, and to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, From the thirteenth year of Josiah the son of Amon king of Judah, even unto this day, that is the three and twentieth year, the word of the LORD hath come unto me, and I have spoken unto you, rising early and speaking; but ye have not hearkened. And the LORD hath sent unto you all his servants the prophets, rising early and sending them; but ye have not hearkened, nor inclined your ear to hear. They said, Turn ye again now every one from his evil way, and from the evil of your doings, and dwell in the land that the LORD hath given unto you and to your fathers for ever and ever: And go not after other gods to serve them, and to worship them, and provoke me not to anger with the works of your hands; and I will do you no hurt. Yet ye have not hearkened unto me, saith the LORD; that ye might provoke me to anger with the works of your hands to your own hurt.” These verses remind us once again of several of the major themes of the book of Jeremiah. One of those themes is found in verse 3 where Jeremiah said to the people, “I have spoken unto you, rising early and speaking; but ye have not hearkened.” When people turn away from God and their hearts become hardened to the truth, this is the result. Perhaps the age in which we live is very much like that of Jeremiah. Do not be discouraged if no one listens to your testimony or your messages. Because of the age in which we live, we might be called to the same type of ministry that Jeremiah had. If we are living as unto the Lord, and preaching as unto the Lord, then it does not discourage us when people do not listen. For their sakes, we hope that they will listen, but we are doing what we are doing primarily to please the Lord Jesus. We cannot keep silent just because people will not listen. The love of Christ constraineth us.

The second great theme found throughout the book of Jeremiah has to do with God’s command for everyone to repent of his or her sins. God’s message in Jeremiah 24:5 is “Turn ye again now every one from his evil way, and from the evil of your doings,” These people were evil. They were evil because of the things that they had done. Their sins could not be justified and could not be explained away. They had no excuses. If anyone wants to have a relationship with God, the number one spiritual issue that must be dealt with is the sin problem. This is true both in regards to getting saved by putting one’s faith in Christ, and it is true after salvation in order to continue to walk in fellowship with Christ. Do not be afraid to call yourself evil because you are evil. Notice what Jacob said about himself in Genesis 47:9, “And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.” The word that Jacob used for “evil” is the same word that is used in Genesis 6:5, “And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

The third spiritual theme found in the first part of Jeremiah chapter 25 has to do with the truth of reaping what we sow. This is also known as the consequences of sin. God told the people of Israel in Jeremiah 25:7, “ye might provoke me to anger with the works of your hands to your own hurt.” No one gains because of doing wrong, not if you wait for a long enough time to pass. There are many illustrations of this truth, just from a practical standpoint. Let’s use the example of robbing a bank. Five minutes after robbing the bank, if you were not shot in the process, then you have a lot of money that you did not have before. But most bank robbers eventually get caught. After a few weeks or a few months you will be behind bars for many years. The money will do you no good then. Of course, whether you get caught or not, God knows what you did, and you will answer for it at the final judgment of your soul. The reason that there are consequences to what we do is because God is holy and He is a just judge. Jesus judges the whole earth, and no one gets away with anything. Galatians 6:7, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Beware. There are many lies and much false information on this theme. There is a price to pay for doing the wrong thing. There are consequences.

The Bible says in Jeremiah 25:8-10, “Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Because ye have not heard my words, Behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, saith the LORD, and Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this land, and against the inhabitants thereof, and against all these nations round about, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, and an hissing, and perpetual desolations. Moreover I will take from them the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones, and the light of the candle.” One of the lessons that we are reminded of from these verses is the fact that God is in charge of the nations of the earth, just like He is in charge of individuals. Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords right now. Every leader of every country has Jesus above the, even if they do not know it and most of them do not know it. But just as every person has consequences to reap for his or her actions, every nation also has consequences to reap for its actions. Human beings need to repent of their sins and leaders need to repent of their sins for the sakes of their souls, but people also need to repent of their sins for the sakes of their nations. God said in Second Chronicles 7:14, “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

The Bible says in Jeremiah 25:11-14, “And this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith the LORD, for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans, and will make it perpetual desolations. And I will bring upon that land all my words which I have pronounced against it, even all that is written in this book, which Jeremiah hath prophesied against all the nations. For many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of them also: and I will recompense them according to their deeds, and according to the works of their own hands.” Everything in the Bible is true. Therefore, it should not be surprising to discover that there is a vast amount of archeological evidence that supports the events that are recorded in the Bible. Not only did God tell Jeremiah that the Israelites would be captive in Babylon for seventy years, but God also pronounced that Babylon would be turned into “perpetual desolations.” In other words, Babylon would be destroyed and from that point forward it would be desolate. That would not have seemed likely when it was pronounced, because Babylon had become the greatest empire the world had seen to that point. One evidence of this was the fact that none of the nations up to that point had been able to conquer Israel: not the Philistines, not the Egyptians, and not the Assyrians. To this day you can travel to Iraq and find the ruins of the great Kingdom of Babylon. It is still a desolation just like God said that it would be. The Bible is not only spiritually true, it is also historically and scientifically accurate. It has to be because the Bible is the Word of God. Some people’s interpretation of the Bible may be inaccurate, but the Bible itself is entirely trustworthy. You will be held accountable for what the Bible says, not for what people say that it says. Just make sure that you take Jesus’ advice concerning the Bible. He said in Matthew 4:4, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

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