The book of Jeremiah is the longest book in the Old Testament. Jeremiah was God’s spokesman during the decline and fall of the southern kingdom [Israel], Judah, and Jerusalem. Among the prophets, not one had a more difficult task than that of Jeremiah, who stood alone for God in the midst of the apostasy of his own people. No other prophet bares his soul to his readers as does Jeremiah. Although Jeremiah announced the coming destruction of Judah, he looked beyond this judgment to a day when everyone would know the Lord personally through the forgiveness of his or her sins (see Jeremiah 31:31-34). This new kind of relationship with the Lord would be a part of the “new covenant” the Lord would establish with his people (Jeremiah 31:31).  

—Henrietta Mears 

Source: This content is from What the Bible Is All About, written by Henrietta Mears. Copyright © 1953, 2011 by Gospel Light. Copyright assigned to Tyndale House Publishers, 2015. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a division of Tyndale House Ministries, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The prophet asks people over 100 times to “turn around” or “repent.” He promises that when people turn from their sins and return to God they will receive forgiveness and healing. He firmly believes that God will renew a repenting people, and he mourns the lack of repentance in his day (Jeremiah 8:18–22). God comforts him with the knowledge that repentance and renewal would eventually come (Jeremiah 33:14–26).

—ESV Study Bible 

Source: Content taken from the ESV® Study Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright ©2008 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

It may be helpful to think of the book of Jeremiah as a notebook or scrapbook of things written by the prophet about his ministry. Jeremiah includes enough “news clippings” to piece together the story of his life, but just as important are the prophetic poems he wrote to address the spiritual needs of his generation and to express the emotions of his own suffering soul. The list of subgenres shows how diverse the anthology is: call narrative, covenant lawsuit, jeremiad (a long recitation of mournful complaints), doom poem, satire, sermon, oracle of judgment, oracle of salvation, memoir, lament or complaint, soliloquy, prophetic object lesson, predictive prophecy, messianic prophecy, epistle, prayer, royal audience, rescue narrative, murder story, and judgment narrative.

The two main unifying elements in the book are the person of Jeremiah himself and the city that he loved, Jerusalem. Reading the book of Jeremiah, one watches the prophet in action, following the broad contours of his biography in the years leading up to and following the cataclysmic fall of Jerusalem (to trace the prophet’s story line, see especially chapters 1, 4, 7, 11–13, 18–20, 24–29, 32, 34–43). At the same time, one sees through windows into the prophet’s soul and witnesses the grief that he suffered in watching the people he loved persist in sin and finally fall under the judgment of God.

—ESV Study Bible

Source: Content taken from the ESV® Study Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright ©2008 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

It was not always easy for Jeremiah to speak God’s words. His commission was not only dangerous, it was often depressing. We have already been given a clue that the book of Jeremiah does not have a happy ending. It ends with the people of Jerusalem being sent into exile. Thus the book of Jeremiah is a tragedy rather than a comedy. It is about the unraveling of a nation. It is the sad story of the decline of God’s people from faith to idolatry to exile.

—Philip Graham Ryken

Source: Content taken from Jeremiah and Lamentations: From Sorrow to Hope © 2016 by Philip Graham Ryken. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

In Jeremiah’s prophecy of the new covenant, Jeremiah explicitly says, “It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers, when I led them by the hand out of Egypt” (Jeremiah 31:32 ESV). How will it be different? For one thing, it will be unbreakable (Jeremiah 31:32). For another, all the members of that covenant will be regenerate, the law written on their hearts (Jeremiah 31:33). Yet another difference will be that the covenant will not operate according to natural lines of birth and descent, but through spiritual birth (Jeremiah 31:29-30). Here the discontinuity between the new covenant and the Mosaic covenant is enormous: a covenant of grace, not works; a covenant that regenerates rather than kills; a covenant entered into through spiritual rather than natural birth. And yet for all this discontinuity, Jeremiah is clear that this new covenant is the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel, made to their forefather Abraham.

—Michael Lawrence

Source: Content taken from Biblical Theology in the Life of the Church by Michael Lawrence ©2010. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Quote retrieved from Grace Quotes at gracequotes.org. 

God delivers his people. Just as the Lord promised to deliver Jeremiah from his many enemies (Jeremiah 1:8, 19), so too Jesus Christ delivers us from our greatest enemies—sin, death, and the Devil. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus has freed us from our sins (Romans 6:1–11), removed the sting of death (1 Corinthians 15:51–57), and crushed the head of the great serpent, Satan (Genesis 3:15; Luke 4:1–13; Colossians 2:15). God’s promise of deliverance sustained Jeremiah amid his suffering. How much more should we draw encouragement from what God has done for us in Jesus amid our own suffering?

—Matthew S. Harmon

Source: Content taken from Jeremiah: A 12-Week Study © 2016 by Matthew S. Harmon. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

The only hope for the sinful human heart is to be supernaturally changed. Jeremiah 31:33 gives the solution. Where sin was once inscribed on the hearts of his people, God provides a new inscription: “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (ESV). Jesus came to inaugurate a new covenant so that sins could be forgiven and sinners could be born again (John 3:5). As “desperately wicked” people, we cannot reform our hearts by our own effort. The only solution is for God to make our hearts new, washed clean from sin and fundamentally reoriented toward pleasing him.

—Got Questions

Source: “What does it mean that the heart is desperately wicked in Jeremiah 17:9?,” Got Questions Ministries, accessed May 25, 2023, [https://www.gotquestions.org/heart-desperately-wicked.html]

If you have never entered into a love relationship with God, he is courting you at this moment. He invites you to enter into a love that will never let you go. He calls you to leave behind the sins that carry you here, there, and everywhere in the spiritual desert. He invites you to embrace Jesus Christ.

If you have already entered the romance of redemption, consider whether you love God the way you did when you first “got married.” If not, do not try to dance around this betrayal. If you are not passionately in love with God, then you have been behaving like a floozy, spiritually speaking. But your divine husband still wants you back. More amazing still, he can restore the passion and purity of your love for him.

There is a hint of such restoration later in Jeremiah’s book.

The Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel! (Jeremiah 31:3–4 ESV; cf. Jeremiah 31:21)

It is amazing enough that God still considers Israel his bride. But there is more. His cleansing is so complete that he restores her to passion and purity.

How can he do that? What detergent can wash away the stain of sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25–27 ESV; cf. Revelation 21:2, 9). Jesus Christ died on the cross to remove the promiscuity and restore the virginity of his spiritual bride.

—Philip Graham Ryken

Source: Content taken from Jeremiah and Lamentations: From Sorrow to Hope © 2016 by Philip Graham Ryken. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

The only thing Jeremiah could think of to do with his doubts and troubles was to take them to the Lord in prayer. Chapter 20 is the prayer of a suffering believer. Imagine Jeremiah in solitary confinement, weakened with physical pain and exhausted by emotional turmoil. Yet the very first words out of his mouth are an invocation to almighty God. “O Lord,” he cries. “O Lord!” God invites us to take our troubles straight to him. This is what godly people have done throughout history. It is what Job did on the ash heap, when he was grieving the death of his family (Job 3). It is what David did in the cave, when he was hiding from King Saul (Psalm 57). It is what Jonah did in the belly of the whale, when he tried to run away from God (Jonah 2). It is even what Jesus did on the cross, when he was suffering for our sins. “My God, my God,” he said (Matthew 27:46 ESV). So whenever you are in trouble, take your troubles to a secret place where you can meet with God in prayer. Where else can you open your heart so freely? Who else will comfort you so tenderly? There is no need to hide your troubles. Take them to the Lord in prayer!

—Philip Graham Ryken

Source: Content taken from When Trouble Comes © 2020 by Philip Ryken. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

From Bibles.net: We highly recommend this book to anyone who needs comfort in their suffering or wants to know what the Bible says about suffering as a Christian.

Jeremiah’s story is incomplete. Near the end of his book we read, “Thus far are the words of Jeremiah” (Jeremiah 51:64 ESV). Nothing more is said about him. We are not even told that he died. His book just breaks off. And his story does not end happily. Yet from chapter 21 onward we see that Jeremiah regained his hope and faithfully fulfilled his prophetic office in spite of his ongoing suffering. His story teaches us that a saint’s future does not depend on whether he can always avoid protesting against his story or restrain himself from uttering what are blasphemies or near blasphemies. Of course, God’s people must do all they can to avoid such failings. Yet the quality of Jeremiah’s future ultimately hinged on nothing other than the reality of God’s steadfast love for him. Because of his chesed for Jeremiah, “the God who gives endurance and encouragement” (Romans 15:5 NIV) restored Jeremiah’s hope, even though he never gave him earthly peace, security, or happiness…

Biblical faith and hope are grounded in God’s self-revelation that—no matter how dark and hopeless life may now seem—his saints will ultimately know him as “the God of chesed,” for that is indeed his name. As the final verse of Psalm 23 affirms: “Surely your goodness and unfailing love [chesed] will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the Lord forever” (NLT). And so we can conclude from the stories of these Old Testament saints that the true Christian story is both sobering and encouraging. We, like they, may face seasons of sorrow and suffering so profound that our faith and hope waver and perhaps even seem to die. We may find ourselves protesting against the story we are in and even be tempted to rebel against it. Yet God in his steadfast love will continue to pursue us…

The God who characterizes himself as abounding in chesed—the God who in the New Testament reveals himself as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ—cannot deny himself, and so even when our suffering prompts us to lose so much perspective that our faith and hope flicker and seem to die, he will remain faithful as long as we don’t explicitly, decisively, and permanently deny him. To lose faith and hope is nothing like forevermore repudiating the only one who can save us (see Hebrews 6:4–8 and Hebrews 10:28–31 with Acts 4:12 and Romans 10:9–13).[1] Naomi, Job, and Jeremiah didn’t deny their Lord, so all their errors, protests, and failings were forgiven them.

[1] Peter impulsively denied his Lord but repented afterward (Matthew 26:30–35, 69–75).

—Mark Talbot

Source: Content taken from When the Stars Disappear © 2020 by Mark Talbot. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

From Bibles.net: We highly recommend this book to anyone who needs comfort in their suffering or wants to know what the Bible says about suffering as a Christian.