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Not All Was Lost!
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had seemingly triumphed, but the Lord was overruling events. His
message to the church was, “I am with you, ... to save you.” “I will
restore health to you and heal you of your wounds.”
Jeremiah 30:11,
17
.
In the glad day of restoration, the tribes of divided Israel were
to be reunited as one people. The Lord declared, “I will bring
them from the north country, and gather them from the ends of the
earth, among them the blind and the lame. ... They shall come with
weeping, and with supplications I will lead them. ... For I am a
Father to Israel.”
Jeremiah 31:8, 9
.
The New Covenant Will Solve the Problem of Apostasy
Humbled in the sight of the nations, those whom Heaven had
once favored above all other peoples of the earth were to learn in
exile the lesson of obedience. “I will correct you in justice, and will
not let you go altogether unpunished,” He declared.
Jeremiah 30:11
.
Yet before all the nations of earth He would demonstrate His plan to
bring victory out of apparent defeat, to save rather than to destroy.
God gave the prophet the message:
“He who scattered Israel will gather him,
and will keep him as a shepherd a flock.” ...
They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, ...
their life shall become like a watered garden,
and they shall never languish again. ...
I will turn their mourning into joy,
I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.
Jeremiah 31:10-13, NRSV
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“Behold, the days are coming ... when I will make a new
covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—
not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the
day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of
Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to
them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with
the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My
law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their