Hosanna!  Lord, save us, please!  That’s what hosanna means: save us!  Make your praises heard, and pray that God would save His remnant (31:7).  Did you notice the order of those two acts?  Praise first.  Then petition.  Let us make our petitions, our requests to God, from a spirit of praise.  Yes, we praise God for what He has done for us; let’s praise Him also for who He is.  He is salvation!

But what is this remnant?  In the days of Jeremiah, it was plain: the remnant were those who did not perish in the destruction of Judah, of Jerusalem and the Temple; the remnant were those who endured generations of exile in Babylon and elsewhere.  The remnant were those whom God allowed to return, whom God led back to the Promised Land.  Any journey we make without God’s guidance is a bad trip.

We seek a better country because we have a more sure salvation.  The remnant is the full number of those whom God has appointed for salvation.  I want that number to be huge, astronomical; Scripture suggests the number may not be quite so large as that.  I don’t want to get hung up on the number.  I want to praise the God who has called us to be His people.  I want to petition this God of our salvation to bring in the full number of His chosen.  I know not one shall be lost.  Amen?

God vows to bring them all.  He will call, and they will answer.  He will guide and lead them.  Oh, they may stumble along the way, but they shall not lose the way.  God’s guidance is sure.  He loses none.  We have our Good Shepherd.  Even those who seem as if they certainly must be left behind and lost along the way, who seem to fall further and further behind, shall be neither lost nor left, neither the blind nor the lame (31:8).  How they need help!  How we need help!  The Lord is patient.  He shelters.  He aids us.  He takes us by the hand and guides us through places and times we have not known.  How lost we would be, without Him!  He calls us to help those who need that extra assistance, compassion, care, and patience.  He calls us, personally and together, to be His Church.

His called and chosen, whom He will bring safely home, “will come with weeping” (31:9).  Tears of sorrow?  Tears of joy?  Yes.  When we consider how we lived and what we did—to ourselves and to others, before God claimed and called us—tears come.  When we consider where we are going, and who is guiding us there, tears come.  Don’t be ashamed of them.  Your tears honor God.  “[T]hey will pray as I bring them back” (31:9).  Prayers of praise, prayer from our deepest needs, because we remember that God shall provide all our need: we lift our hearts to God, and He nurtures us and delights in us.  Never doubt that God delights in you, though He is not pleased when you or I go astray.  He provides the way back; He guides us there, to those “streams of water on a level path” (31:9).

Israel remembered and sang of the streams that God provided in the desert.  Where there was no water, no thought of water, no hope for water, God gave water.  Sweet water, cool, clear water, as the Sons of the Pioneers sang back in grandpa’s day.  The world offers what it says is water, what it sells as water.  Have you tried those waters?  I did.  They weren’t so sweet as advertised.  Nor so clear.  They didn’t satisfy.  They weren’t supposed to.

Jesus speaks of his Father.  We pray as Jesus taught, our Father.  God is not often addressed as Father in the Old Testament.  That does not mean, though, that no one except Jesus thought of Him that way, just as it does not mean that God never spoke of Himself in that way.  Listen to Him speaking when He says He will guide His people safely “because I am Israel’s father, and Ephraim is my firstborn son” (31:9).  Our Father in heaven has a father’s care, a father’s zeal for his children.  Maybe your earthly father was an inspiration to you, maybe he was a monster or just a mess.  We all need a father, not a begetter or a braggart, but a father.  As you are in Jesus Christ, and he in you, God is your Father: abba father—Daddy.

Scripture makes no secret of the delight the world takes in disasters that befall the people of God.  It should be a caution to us that we also can take delight when disaster befalls others, as though their disaster were God’s judgment, and they got just what they deserved.  What the peoples do not perceive, what escapes their notice and understanding, is that God is sovereign.  This is hard even for us to grasp, but our salvation as well as our very existence hang upon this sovereignty.  The great, sorrowful tragedy of Scripture is that God warns His people that He will judge them, along with everyone else, unless they change their ways and love Him as they ought, as they would if they were in their right mind and didn’t live out of their senses.  They didn’t.  God judged.  God scattered.  The nations celebrated and rejoiced, thinking the disasters that befell the people of God demonstrated the weakness or nonexistence of this God.  To the contrary, all this disaster was a clear demonstration of His power to fulfil His Word.  Count on the promises of God.

His Word does not end with punishment; judgment is not the end for God’s people: “Hear the word of the Lord, you nations; proclaim it in distant coastlands: ‘He who scattered Israel will gather them and will watch over his flock like a shepherd’” (31:10).  Like the prodigal child, the judgment was to recall us to our senses, our right mind.  God recalls us.  He will gather—here we are!  He will protect and keep us.  God is so good, He’s so good to us.

Here, I want to plunge us into some cold waters, then up and out again, as into fresh air and clear sky.  Jeremiah says, “the Lord will deliver Jacob and redeem them from the hand of those stronger than they” (31:11).  He will save.  Amen!  Now, whose is the hand stronger than they, stronger than the people of God?  The enemies of God’s people?  They are people, too—sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker.  Not always stronger.  We have spiritual enemies—those are the true enemies, the dark powers of darkness.  I don’t say this to scare but to remind: our warfare is spiritual.  Those spiritual enemies are strong: Lord, we know it!  Yet we have victory in Jesus, victory in, through, and by the Word of God.  Keep the Word close!  This is your armor, your shield, your sword.

If neither our earthly nor our spiritual enemies, then, have the hand stronger than ours, whose is the stronger hand?  God’s.  Amen!  God’s hand is always, eternally stronger, and how safe we are, in those hands.  And it was this very hand of the Lord that subjected God’s people to punishment, and it is only from this hand of the Lord that redemption can be sought, and had.  Who will deliver from the Lord?  The Lord!  We are redeemed not from men, nor from the powers that seek to sicken our souls, but from the judgment of God.  We are redeemed from God, by God, for God.  Those are some breathtaking January waters; let’s come back up!

Redeemed from judgment from the hand of God through the abundant grace poured out for us in the outstretched hands of God, what shall we do?  With the rest of God’s people, let us, also “come and shout for joy on the heights of Zion” (31:12).  Let us, also, “rejoice in the bounty of the Lord—the grain, the new wine and the olive oil, the young of the flocks and herds” (31:12).  The Lord’s bounty.  God provides.  God provides all our need.  We shall not want.  We hear of the misery of the poor, and from the comfort of our relative wealth we feel pity for them.  Yet we have not contemplated deeply enough, if at all, the joy of the poor in spirit.  “They will be like a well-watered garden, and they will sorrow no more” (31:12).  God gives the water, beloved; sometimes He asks us to bring the water where He wants it.  Would you carry it, there?  Would you help to pour?

Sorrow for others can prompt us to Christlike living.  In this new year, let us resolve to stop feeling sorry for ourselves.  Self-pity is a quick way to lose sight of the waters God gives.  Self-pity goes to dwell in hopelessness, and that is far from Christ, indeed.  When God says that He “will turn their mourning into gladness [and] give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow” (31:13), He means what He says.  We can work against the purposes of God—but who would willingly, knowingly do that?!—or we can pray God to grant us that willing spirit, to cooperate, to obey, to walk this year in God’s Word, rather than to keep pulling away this way and that.

Tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy.  O, tidings of comfort and joy.  I want to declare that 2022 shall be the year of comfort and joy.  Would you join me in this resolve?  Shall we sing together, pray together, worship together, labor together, live together for Christ towards this joyful resolution?

God promises, “my people will be filled with my bounty” (31:14).  Satisfaction.  God provides satisfaction.  Where?  When?  Here.  Now.  Upon that cross, on that hill far away, long ago.  Whoever comes to me will never go hungry.  Whoever believes in me shall never be thirsty (Jn 6:35).  Christ came to fill, to fulfill, to give satisfaction, full, entire satisfaction, to take all the judgment of God upon himself, that, through himself, he might give all the grace of God to whoever will receive him.  Hunger for this grace, thirst for this grace, and He will fill you with His bounty.

To the God of all grace, who calls you to share God’s eternal glory in union with Christ, be the power forever!