In various passages throughout the Holy Bible we are told that those who populate the world’s “Chrisitan nations” are what has become known as the “lost tribes of Israel.”  Israel, in this sense, is the name given the ten Israelite tribes that separated from Judah and Benjamin due to a taxation issue.  The tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and later Levi (the “southern tribes”) were nicknamed “Jews” by the King James translators.  The Jews lived in the area of the Promised Land called Judea.  Officially, they are “Judahites.”  After separating from the Jews, the ten northern tribes officially divorced themselves from their brethren, established themselves as an independent nation and named as their capital the city of Samaria.  The northern tribes retained the name Israel, but were also known collectively as Ephraim.  As I pointed out in the series titled Who and Where is Israel Today? key word, Today, the descendants of Israel were scattered throughout the world following their defeat at the hands of Assyria in the early 700’s B.C.

From that point on only the Jews, who had later been joined by the priestly tribe of Levi, were the only Israelites living in the Promised Land.  Today the Jews, misnamed Israel, occupy a small sliver of the land God gave to the descendants of Abraham which stretches from the Euphrates River to the Nile River north and south, and from Lebanon to the Dead Sea east and west.  The original Promised Land is several times larger than what is called Israel today.  This situation will change upon the arrival of Jesus Christ when He will restore Israel to her original inheritance.  It is there that Jesus, God and Their Very Elect will live for eternity and from which they will rule the universe.  New Jerusalem will be the capitol city of the Kingdom of God.  Read the previous series for more information as to the size of the coming kingdom.

Today the multi-bodied religious organism known as “the church” is comprised mostly of the ten lost tribes of Israel plus a contingent of converted Gentiles–spiritual Israelites.  See the series referred to earlier for a detailed explanation of this situation.

This posting involves the Prophet Jeremiah whom God had appointed to guide the Jews following Israel’s defeat and global scattering.  Jeremiah’s commission was to teach them the lessons their Israelite brethren had not learned.  As his book makes clear, that lesson was not embraced by the three-tribed nation.  We will look at the first five chapters of Jeremiah’s book in order to learn God’s message to the Jews concerning what they were doing and what would be the outcome of their actions.  As both Biblical history reveals, their actions and the outcome were the same as for their Israelite brethren.  Their defeat, enslavement and scattering had been the result of the ten tribes’ sins (transgressing His Law).  At the time of Jeremiah’s ministry the Jews were on track to reap the same whirlwind for producing the same wind (Hosea 8:7),

In Jeremiah 3:3-9,14 we find that, though the Lord is directing His message to the Jews specifically at that time, He is also speaking about, and speaking to the ten tribes of Israel that had been scattered throughout the world many years earlier.  The prophet goes to great lengths to warn both houses of Israel then and now about what would happen to them in the latter days if they did not turn from their sins, embrace Him and obey His Law.  Again, what the Lord told Jeremiah to say to the Jews about the future he (Jeremiah) would also “say” to the scattered Israelites in the end times.  Though he would be long dead before his words reached them, he would send his message through his book, which we are studying in this posting.  God continues to “speak” to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob today through the writings of the prophets and apostles, as well as through His end-time apostles who minister from the Holy Bible.

Throughout the first five chapters of Jeremiah’s book the Lord reminds the Jews then, and the other tribes of Israel now, of why He has poured out His wrath on them time and time again.  The problem is sin, which is defined in First John 3:4 as “the transgressing of the Law.”  In Jeremiah 3:12-16 we find the Lord calling for wayward Israel to return to Him, promising that He will show her mercy.  In verse 14 He makes it clear that Israel’s repentance, conversion and walk must be total and permanent.  He also knows that few will answer His call.  In verse 14 He prophesies that He will “… take one of a city and two of a family” unto Himself and bring them to Zion.  Zion (Jerusalem) is symbolic of God’s true church whose members will, upon the return of Christ, be resurrected and taken to Jerusalem where they will assist Him in creating the Kingdom of God on earth.

The emphasis in verses 12-16 is on two aspects of His return: 1) the purity which He commands in His true saints and 2) the tiny number who will attain that purity whom He will resurrect upon His return.  Though the numbers quoted in verse 14 are symbolic, they represent the fact that, as Jesus warned in Matthew 7:13-23 and 22:14, many will have been called to enter His strait gate and walk His narrow way to salvation, but few will answer His call to holiness.  Few, having counted the cost of discipleship, will take up their cross and follow Him (Lk. 14:28).  Read Persecution by that name.  Jesus warns that those who count the cost of discipleship and willingly pay it will be few in number.  Let us be among the chosen few.  L.J.

Memory verse: Here we find Paul warning Timothy that there will always be those in the church who will be “Ever learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the Truth.”  Though these parishioners (the vast majority) will hear the same messages and read the same Words of God as the true saints, they will allow Satan to steal God’s Truths from them.