Summary: Introductory Session on the Book of Jeremiah
This is the first session in a 28-session Bible study on Jeremiah, running through April.
Opening: The session starts with logistics and a few puns. Teachings will be posted weekly at lifeindeed.org and emailed to the group. He uses the ESV and encourages comparing translations on sites like Bible Hub. He also notes that AI can produce charts and timelines, but readers should be discerning, and he recommends gotquestions.org with some reservations.
His approach: Rather than focusing mainly on historical background, he will draw out practical application. Jeremiah is often seen as “gloom and doom,” but he argues its central theme is that the human heart hasn’t changed since Genesis. He reads an editorial by Armstrong Williams making a similar point. Jeremiah also ties together the whole Bible, since understanding it requires Genesis, the Exodus, the Judges, the kings and the split kingdom. It pairs with the Genesis and Revelation studies others are teaching.
Main teaching: Deuteronomy and Jeremiah
- Judah’s exile (around 600 and 587 BC) was exactly what Deuteronomy 28 had warned of. The people assumed they were safe because they had the temple, the priesthood and the law.
- Jeremiah’s message came in three stages: get right with God, this is your last chance, and finally, it is too late.
- “Heart” is a key word in Deuteronomy, Psalms, Proverbs and Jeremiah. He walks through Deuteronomy passages (6:5, 8, 17, 29, 30) showing that obeying God requires the whole heart, and that Solomon broke the king’s laws.
- A key discovery: the phrase “the stubbornness of your evil heart” appears 10 times in the Old Testament, nine of them in Jeremiah. He prefers the NKJV rendering, “the dictates of your evil heart.” He defines “evil” biblically as the flesh’s tendency to do what it wants, not just extreme wickedness like Hitler’s. He traces the phrase through Jeremiah 3:17, 5, 7:23, 9:12, 11, 13, 16:10-12, 18:12 and 23:16.
Themes and applications:
- The law showed that no one could be righteous on their own except Christ. Believers receive righteousness through faith in him.
- Jeremiah 31 promises a new covenant and a new heart, fulfilled through being born again by the Spirit (Nicodemus, Pentecost). Hearts need changing, which is why the epistles teach how to live by the new nature.
- The exile cured Israel’s idolatry and instilled the fear of the Lord, preserving the nation until Christ. The intertestamental “fence laws” show how external rule-keeping missed the heart.
- Jeremiah wept because he shared God’s grief over people heading toward ruin, much as we grieve for loved ones on a destructive path.
- He briefly defends God’s judgments, such as the Amalekite conflict, as part of preserving the line leading to the Messiah.
Closing: The session ends with a prayer of gratitude for what Christ accomplished and for the Spirit enabling believers to live by the new nature. Next week the group will begin at Jeremiah 1:1.