I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Jeremiah 31-32.

    Jeremiah prophesied that God would make a new covenant with the people of Israel. Traditionally, Christians have interpreted this to have been fulfilled with the death and resurrection of Jesus. I tend towards this interpretation, but, if so, that means we need to give some thought to what the prophet means when he talks about aspects of this new covenant. Jeremiah says that God will put His law in our minds and write it on our hearts. That is fairly straightforward. However, then Jeremiah tells us that we will not need to teach our neighbors or call on them to know the Lord because they will already know Him. That part seems problematic. There are certainly people today who do not know the Lord and it seems like there are people who do know the Lord who need to be taught.

    Having said that, it seems to me that my understanding of how God intends for the Church to be structured fits right into that. God has provided the Bible to us in a way that each of us can read it on our own and learn His intentions and desires. It does not take special training to understand what the Bible says to us. Each and every one of us can go to the Bible and see what God has to say for ourselves. We do not need someone to interpret what it means. As for the place where Jeremiah says that everyone will know the Lord, he actually says that all of the “people of Israel” will know the Lord. In terms of the New Covenant of Christianity, “the people of Israel” are the Church, those who have accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior.

    I want to point out that this interpretation leaves something to be desired. For me, filling that hole can be dealt with by recognizing that many of the prophecies in the Bible have more than one valid interpretation. God promises that He will never abandon the descendants of Jacob, that Israel will never cease to be a nation. This is consistent with what we see in the world today. Israel was a nation without land for centuries, but once more it has land in which it exists. More importantly, in the prophecy from Jeremiah God stated that He will never reject all of the descendants of Israel. We see this fulfilled in those Messianic Jews who are followers of Christ. In every generation there have been Jews who have come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior.