I will make an everlasting covenant with them. I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear and respect Me, so that they will never turn away from Me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all My heart and soul. (Jeremiah 32:40-41)
Note: This post expands on my notes from a message by Dr. Charley Lynn Chase.
1. We Have Hope Because God Is Committed to Jesus’ Followers
Even though this is an Old Testament (“OT”) passage, Christ taught us that He came to fulfill all the Scriptures.1 The whole OT was speaking about Jesus and Christian believers are grafted into the one people that God began to gather in OT times.
Dr. J. Alec Motyer (1924-2016) was an Irish scholar who learned to love the Bible from his grandmother. He said that if the Israelites under Moses would have given their “testimony,” they would have said something like this:
ELF bullets please
We were in a foreign land, in bondage, under the death sentence.
But our mediator—the one who stands between us and God—came to deliver us.
We trusted God’s promises, took shelter under the blood of the lamb, and the Lord led us out of slavery.
Then the Lord put us on the path to His Promised Land.
Along the way, we God the Holy Spirit and His Scriptures to guide us.
And the Lord will stay with us until we get to our true country, our everlasting home, whose Architect and Builder is God.
Motyer said: “Now think about it. A Christian today can say the same thing, almost word for word.” The OT people were saved by God’s grace, just like we are, freely forgiven and accepted by God through faith in the Mediator, the Messiah, God provided. Christ-following Jews and non-Jews receive eternal salvation by Jesus’ costly atonement.2
Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away our sin! His saved ones’ names were written in His Book of Life before the world’s creation. Jesus’ substitutionary death and resurrection were not accidental. This was planned by God the Holy Trinity from all eternity. That’s how much He loves us and how secure believers are in Christ!3
Jeremiah Wrote About Jesus
About 600 BC, God sent Jeremiah to announce Christ’s Advent in advance. The Lord said, “I will raise up a righteous descendant from King David’s line. He will be a King who rules with wisdom and do what is just and right throughout the land.”4 OT believers could be optimistic because Messiah was surely coming. Christians can be hopeful because Jesus has already come the first time, He is now working all things for our good, and He will return for us.
When Christ shall come with trumpet sound,
Oh, may I then in Him be found.
Dressed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand.
All other ground is sinking sand.5
Charley Chase says: In Jeremiah, God commits to us. These words are as much ours as a check written to us or a present with our name on it. Through the Bible’s very great and precious promises, the Lord speaks to Christians as surely as He did when He spoke to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The Lord has made guarantees to us, that’s why we have hope, joy, and grace-based optimism. He promises: You will be My people, and I will be your God.6
2. We Have Hope Because God Has Sworn to Rescue Us
- The Lord has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into Jesus’ kingdom
- Christ will finally bring all His people safely home into His new creation.7
On the night before Jesus’ atoning death, He ate the Passover meal with His disciples. He explained that His blood was going to be shed on the cross to ratify the new covenant, foretold by Jeremiah. Here are a few blessings that belong to Jesus’ followers:
Christ chose us and is a forever faithful husband, protecting and providing for us even when we are unfaithful. Jesus loved His church (His believers) and gave Himself up for us to make us holy and clean.8 Here’s why Christians look to the future with optimism.
Jesus will put His law in our minds and write it on our hearts so that we walk in newness of life. In the OT, God’s law was engraved on stone tablets and placed in the Tabernacle. Now Christians are God’s living temple, and the Holy Spirit puts God’s truth in our hearts so that we follow Jesus and forsake things that are contrary to Him.9 Don’t stay stuck in discouragement. Trusting and obeying God restores our faith in Him.
Holy Spirit gives us eternal life so that now we know the only true God personally, through Jesus, whom the Father has sent. We are no longer the most important person in the world to us; Christ is. The Lord brings us to understand Him, the King who exercises kindness, justice, and righteousness on earth. And God delights in us.10 Here’s why we are optimistic in Christ!
The Lord will forgive our wickedness and will remember our sins no more. Jesus was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. On the cross He said that our sin debt to God was paid in full, so He made perfect reconciliation between God and us.11 Jesus has settled all the big issues for us!
Christianity is faith in Jesus’ ultimate victory.
The gates of hell can never prevail against Christ and His chosen people.12
To be continued. You can read Grace Focused Optimism (Part 2)
You may also like Optimism in Jesus, True Optimism in Christ, The Best Optimism, Better Than Optimism
Notes (various Bible translations): 1 See for example: Luke 24:25–27; Acts 26:22–23; 1 Peter 1:10–12. See also “Where Is Jesus in the Old Testament? How to Find Him on Every Last Page” by Glen Scrivener, desiringgod.org. 2 Motyer comments adapted from Tim Keller. 3 John 1:29,36; Rev 5:1-14, 13:8, 19:6-9; Isa 53:4-7; 1 Peter 1:17-21. 4 Jer 23:5. 5 “My Hope is Built on Nothing Less”
by Edward Mote (1834). 6 Jer 30:22, 31:33. 8 Col 1:13; Ps 138:7-8; Rom 8:35-39; 1 Cor 10:13; 2 Tim 4:8,18; 1 Peter 5:10-11. 9 Jer 31:32; Eph 5:25–27; Rev 19:7; 21:2,9. 10 Jer 31:33; 2 Cor 3:3; Heb 8:10; 1 Pet 2:5. 11 Jer 9:24, 31:34; John 17:17; Heb 8:11. 12 Jer 31:34, Luke 19:30; Rom 4:25. 13 See Matthew 16:18.