June 2025
‘they shall all know me’
Jeremiah 31.34 (KJV)
Jeremiah is God’s man, called to prophetic ministry, longing to bring others
hope for the future, charged with teaching the people of Israel to align their
values in obedience to God who plans a new relationship with them; a new
covenant of love. The times were dark, Jeremiah’s message often sombre, but a
strong streak of grace runs through it. Conveying the mind of God to his people
was Jeremiah’s job, personal integrity and faithfulness his defence.
Chapter 31, from which June’s Saying comes, rewards reading in its entirety. It is
a summary of Israel in the last days. Verse 2 sets God’s tone poignantly: ‘The
people which were left of the sword found grace in the wilderness’. I love this
picture, followed in verse 3 by God’s declaration: ‘I have loved thee with an
everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee’.
What a marvellous collection of reassurances about Israel’s future. God’s
intentions for his children are SO good. Here is parental mercy as good as
anything found in the New Testament, but how often that ancient message has
been ignored, the new covenant as yet unknown. Jeremiah shows us that we
cannot save ourselves; the mind is deceitful. Only God can repurpose the inner
intentions of our hearts. Jeremiah 24.7 offers God’s ultimate reassurance: ‘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’. The Covenant promised long ago is promised to us too.
‘They shall all know me’, God says, no ifs, no buts. Our iniquities are forgiven, our
sin remembered no more because of His love and the gift to ALL people of the
Saviour of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ.
J. L. Packer remarks in Knowing God: ‘What matters … is not … the fact that I
know God, but … that he knows me … I am never out of his mind. All my
knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me. I know
him because he first knew me and continues to know me … as a friend’.
May this
June bring us every chance to feel that precious friendship anew, to find, in
Jeremiah’s words, ways to know and be known by God, our Creator and our
friend.