Ken Boa Reflections Ministries

Dr. Ken Boa: So we are going to pick up where we left off on Jeremiah. And again with the Handbook to Prayer, which is what this is from. And the Daily Growth emails are based upon this Handbook to Prayer. I chose three chapters from Jeremiah out of the 365. So I chose Jeremiah 18 and 19 and 31. Today we're going to look at chapter 31.

But just to remind you of where we've been, though. Again, you have this idea of five decades without any positive response. That was not an easy life to be a man like a Jeremiah or like an Ezekiel and to be rejected by his people. But he's faithful to the end and he uses the sign of the potter as an object lesson which says you have a window still before it can be shaped, but it's going to become brittle if you wait any longer.

You've got that final molten moment as it were, to use another metaphor, but even now you can repent. And it's a bona fide offer, yet you will say, "No, each of us is going to go according to his own stubborn ways." In other words, he says, this is what you're going to do, and he was right. Just as Jesus, when he offered himself to Jerusalem, it was a bona fide offer, but he knew he would be rejected by his people.

So what you have here is God who desperately wants his people and even at the last minute cries out for us. But by a certain point we can harden our hearts and enure ourselves to the prompting and the convicting of the Spirit of God. That's this on a large scale, but even on smaller levels, you have to be very careful that you don't resist his prompts because every time you do, it gets harder and harder and you're not able to hear.

And that's what he was predicting and indeed it was the case. And we have another potter image here, but it's irrevocable consequences, this broken earthenware of their apostasy, idolatry, and immorality. In other words, it is now gone over. So he shattered the jar in their sight to portray the way God would break the people in the city and this scene summarizes that burden that we've just been describing.

In spite of God's good covenant love for his people, they've corrupted themselves through their spiritual harlotry. Now they're beyond the point of repentance and so that's the backdrop for here, but we're jumping ahead later in the book and this is an incredibly important chapter. I'm just going to kind of tie it together here quickly and then go into more detail.

But his prophecy about the coming new covenant and there's two places where it mentions this idea of the new covenant. It would be in Jeremiah 31 and verse 31 in particular, it says that he's going to put a new covenant in your hearts. I'm going to take away the heart of stone, I'm going to put a heart of flesh, I'm going to put my law in your hearts. In other words, I'm going actually put it inside of you.

And that's the new covenant that Jesus was predicting and that it would be the covenant in his blood where it's no longer going to be external but it's going to be internal. And so this whole idea is found there, it's also found in Ezekiel 36 as we'll see a little bit later. So you have this prophetic consolation, though, because in spite of the fact that judgment is inevitable, nevertheless, even so, I will not break my promises to you, I will keep covenant.

In fact, I'm going to give you a better covenant, even more beyond what you deserve, and it's a covenant of grace as we're going to be seeing. So this Mosaic covenant which was external and couldn't be fulfilled by human effort or merit, this new covenant that we enjoy is internal and fulfilled by God's indwelling spirit. And there's the genius of it. One of the parts of the genius is that this life is utterly impossible. No one can live the Christian life.

No one can manifest love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control all the time. No one can fulfill the law. But when you walk by the spirit, you are now fulfilling the law. And so ultimately he can do it in you and through you as you. You can't do it, but he can. So he not only tells you how to live but he empowers you to do it.

So that's really the key concept here. So I want to go to just a little bit of a word about Jeremiah and how the theme and the purpose of this book and going back to that, that God is seen clearly as being patient, but he's also holy. And so ultimately judgment will come, but he says even now you can avert it. It's a delayed judgment because of his grace.

Again, he always gives his people more than they deserve. And this object lesson that we saw in the potter's vessel, both in chapter 18 when he spoke about the opportunity to receive and yet they're going to reject, and then in 19 when he actually broke the earthenware pottery is to illustrate the time for repentance would soon pass. And so that was the theme, this urgency that's being given.

But there was a defiance that you can see hard-wired, built into the people themselves, a refusal. We are going to go each of us according to the stubbornness of our hearts and the inevitability of Babylonian captivity. They didn't even seem to connect their sin with the consequences. They deceived themselves into supposing that God's prophets were wrong and that they'll be fine, that nothing's going to come upon them.

Yet the sudden destruction would be very swift and quite inevitable. So here are causes and promises, but the remnant of the new covenant and a remnant will be turned and they will then be given promise of prosperity and peace. So some of the keys to this book because whenever I put together the Talk Thru the Bible in 1981 I think it was Talk Thru the Old Testament, then I wrote in 1982 Talk Thru the New Testament.

And I'm almost tempted to show you- well, I'll show you the back cover. I can't resist this thing. Oh wait, don't look at that. I know what I was doing here, it was back here. And I found this cover here, all kinds of pretty plant pictures and so forth, but I will come up in a moment here. There, there. That's from the back cover of Talk Thru the New Testament that came out in 1982 when I wrote that.

And the back cover, you have it right there, yeah. But the original book had a little paper jacket. And the other one before was from the year before when we were living in Roswell. So it was kind of fascinating to go back to that and to remember those days. But going back to where we were before, I was thinking about the idea of Judah's Talk Thru the Bible.

And when I wrote Talk Thru the Bible, I wrote it in such a way that it would deal with the same things, deal with the theme and the purpose and you'd deal with all the other components. One of the components we included was key word and key verse and key chapter. So it is indeed Judah's last hour. But funny part is I remember writing that. Of course, I wrote with a Pentel pencil because there was no word processor.

I was beginning just about to get my Mac- not a Mac but an Apple. No, not an Apple, it was an IBM PC is what it was with the two little things in there. Good grief, I remember this. I was trying to decide between that and a Victor 9000. I figured, you know, the Victor 9000 has better features than the IBM PC, it really did. But IBM is known and it's like the original appearance of cars, 100 car makers suddenly appear out of nowhere, very few survived.

If you can think about that, Hewlett-Packard and Studebaker and these things. So it was the same thing with computers, that was my reasoning. Good choice. That said, though, this is what I commanded them saying, obey my voice and I'll be your God and you will be my people and walk in all the ways that I've commanded you and it will be well with you. So it was a key verse for us to see God's appeal to his people.

Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart and went backward and not forward. So it's a kind of a great summary of the book. It's a hard book to read, I'll be honest with you. Every time I read the books like this I'm hoping it'll turn out better than it did. You know it's about to happen, you know how stupid it is.

I was just Karen and I up to Exodus and the plagues and the almost pathetically amusing moment when the Pharaoh is invited to determine when the frogs are to be removed. Because the frogs were in their bed, they're in their kneading bowls, frog bread. You had frogs everywhere. So he says in his pride to Moses, tomorrow. In other words, another night with the frogs because of his stupid pride he didn't want to seem desperate. "God, get rid of them tomorrow."

So he had another night with the frogs. Stupidity manifest. But in any case, the idea of a refusal to hear the voice of God. And so they know it's going to come and yet their stubbornness is and autonomy. They've healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly saying peace, peace when there's no peace. Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination?

No, they were not at all ashamed nor did they know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall. In the time of their punishment they shall be cast down, says the Lord. I call it a key verse because it's a great summary of the process of rebellion and the consequences thereof. And the key chapter is the one we're looking at now, chapter 31.

And so these wonderful promises are given in spite of their folly and their disobedience, in spite of all that. Yet he makes these wonderful promises: I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people. And so that's a beautiful picture and we're going talk a bit more about that. And of course relates to the inauguration of the new covenant in Matthew.

So there's a clear predictive pathway. So Isaiah's contribution to the Bible, just while I'm at it, rather Jeremiah's. While Isaiah is generally chronological, Jeremiah's less so. So you have to kind of put it together and figure out what's going on. The possible arrangement of the various messages that are given under various concluding kings of Judah, kind of put it together and then even after with Gedaliah at the end there after Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed the wall and the city.

So you have this Yahweh seen as the sovereign creator and the Lord of all things is a major motif in this book. You see his sovereignty, his holiness is very clear. Therefore his judgment follows because of his holiness and his sovereignty, his holy love and righteous compassion. And in fact that's one of the things you see in the book of Revelation as well.

You see his holiness and his awe and his majesty and he has the right to judge and it's amazing that he did not treat us in pure wrath but ultimately the coming of the lamb of God, the one who was slain, gives us far better than we deserve. But he has all right and authority to judge and while Jesus came to save his people from their sin, he did not come to judge, but he will come again.

And there is the prelude to the judgment of Christ because the holiness of the father and of the son are seen there. The creator and the redeemer. And ultimately it shows he has every right to judge and then the sealed judgments and the bowl and the trumpets take place. So there's a picture of this. There's the only true God and he is beyond our imagination.

Consider Revelation chapter one and chapter four and five. A picture there of his holiness and his awe, his majesty, his might, his dominion. You see it also in Daniel. And these are motifs that remind us about that he's beyond our comprehension and he's glorious in all respects and that he's the only true God. And ultimately he is the one who hates idolatry because it is destructive to his own people and it causes them to lose the way of life.

He hates immorality. Not as an end in itself because it is contrary to him. He hates it because it hurts his people as well. So he hates that which is evil for us. And yet he cannot force us and will not force us against our will to receive his grace. It's a deep mystery that the love of God can be spurned and that is the risk of love.

But the only way you can, as C.S. Lewis put it, that you can be free from all the dangers and perturbations, the ups and downs of love, is hell. Then you'll be safe. No more danger about love and ups and downs and so forth. You'll be in this black hole of the self, the autonomous self, no relationships, no I-thou, no others, just the black hole of the self, enclosed by the gravity of its own egoism.

A loss of reverence leads to moral degradation and disillusion. And this is what always happens. Even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity that their bodies might be dishonored among them for the exchange of the truth of God for a lie and began to worship the creation rather than the creator ultimately. So he talks about the fact that there is a spiritual rebellion which leads to an intellectual darkness which third leads to a moral corruption. It's inside out.

It starts with the rebellion. The most important thing about you is whether you're going to be oriented and open to the purposes of God or not. Even as a believer we have trouble where we can harden our hearts to a certain degree and choose the way of mediocrity rather than the way of greatness, which amazes me. I think I'm just going to be mediocre today. Yeah, at best I'll be a thirty-fold if I'm that.

But forget about a hundred-fold, only the greats can do that. Nonsense. Reward is based on faithfulness to opportunity, not on how much you were given: time, talent, treasure. The divine equalizer is based on what you do with what you were given. Therefore a person with very little time, talent, treasure can be rewarded as much as a Saint Paul.

So if that's true, if faithfulness to opportunity is the basis for rewards, then ask yourself this question, why wouldn't you want to be a hundred-fold? Why would you choose less? Am I making sense here? Very few do. The number of people who do that is the four-soil person is 1% at most. But then the going for 30, 60, and a hundred-fold. Why would you say, "I think 30's enough"?

Do you understand what I'm saying? We are anemic in our desires, we do not want enough, and therefore it diminishes our will and our thought life and our choices. So there are changes during Jeremiah's life. It began with reformation, going back to that, that was my little sermonette there. It begins with Assyria and ends with Babylon in power. Jews are in the land, or by the end of the book they're deported.

Jeremiah is in Jerusalem, he ends up in Egypt against his will. He's addressing the masses, he now addresses a mere remnant because they have in fact succumbed to the very things that he predicted would occur over his many years of ministry. All these over 40 years of prophetic oracles. There appears to be no positive response. Instead nothing but pushback and cisterns and abuse and rejection.

Yet he gave the oracle that he was called to give. And so a man is called to be faithful to God's purposes for his life, whatever your oracle is. All of us have a calling. It's not that one is one versus another being a prophetic calling, but I think all of us have a divine calling. And there's no sacred-secular dichotomy there. It's just a question of what do you want more than anything else.

I can't resist going back to this little thought: your values and your desires, your longings. I think it's really the most important thing about you is what you want. What does Lewis say? We're half-hearted creatures, fooling about with money and drink and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child in the slum who's willing to go on making mud pies because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at the sea.

We're too easily pleased. In other words, our heavenly father finds our desires are not too much, they're too little. And so I put it this way: anemic values. Because if you don't want enough, it's going to make your thought life sloppy as well, and you're going to tolerate all kinds of nonsense. Now we live in a world with more nonsense and more options are available than ever before.

And if you're not careful, you'll go with where a lot of men go. Even ministers go. Am I right, it's about 30% of ministers are involved in pornography. I find it hard to conceive of. Imagine now when it's amplified by AI, I don't even want to even think that. But the reality is the world is very, very powerful. And if you don't have a strong call, a strong vision of your life that God's calling you- you're a called man.

That you want so much that you want nothing less than infinity and eternity. If you don't grasp that, you will succumb to the downward lure and pull of the world. You'll have a sloppy thought life and flabby wills because you haven't exercised it. So I just say that because it's such an important theme to me, that this whole idea of seeing the beginning and the middle and the end of this is so tragic to me.

That I see the appeal that this book summarizes so much. Well, we have in this word in Messiah the fulfillment of the new covenant. In his days Judah will be saved, Israel will dwell safely. Now this is the name by which he will be called, the Lord our righteousness. And so he will bring in the new covenant as that we see in chapter 31 of Jeremiah. He's going to fulfill the Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic covenant and the Davidic covenant.

We're going talk about that a little bit in a moment. And so he brings all that to bear. So that's a concept that I just wanted you to make sure you grasp because it's so critical to me. So let me go to my Jeremiah 19 little thing here. And I'm using something that I picked up from Bible.org. It's a very helpful little analysis of the message. And has the text right here as well.

I'm not going to read the whole chapter, but it's the earthenware jar. He takes some of them and then he smashes it and says, "I'm going to bring calamity upon this place at which the ears of everyone that hears of it will tingle." Because they have forsaken me and have made this an alien place and burned sacrifices in it to other gods that neither they nor their forefathers nor the kings of Judah had ever known.

They've filled this place with the blood of the innocent. And so what we have here is this image of the use both in chapters 18 and 19 as I mentioned by the use of the image of the potter and the potter's jar. And so this is an image that God uses as an object lesson. And so we see that the covenant people are being confronted by the God of the covenant and they've totally failed as Yahweh's revelation to the nations.

So the word is used, it's called a calamity or catastrophe, a disaster, but the Hebrew word has various meanings here that tells us that there's an inevitability of disaster, of wickedness. And so the various ways in which these images can be described of punishment and harm. These are precisely what someone who loves another would not want for them to see. And yet he sees it coming and prophesies it.

So bad that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. Surprising judgment because they've forsaken Yahweh, they've worshipped foreign gods, and they've sacrificed their children to Moloch, which was a burning idol. And so they would actually put this the burning arms of this horror and sacrifice it to that. Let's see if I can find an image of these false gods.

So you have these false gods, these kind of Astarte or Ashtoreth, really lovely looking thing. Even better looking here, these idiotic gods that they were worshipping: Baal and demon gods like Milcom also called Molech and Moloch. And it was something like this, it was like an oxen and they would actually have a fire inside that and they'd actually put children on the arms or on the surface of that thing.

This is an incredible and they thinking that these gods will protect them. So here's an image of one actually being done in this way. So it's amazing how they could do such stupidity and yet they committed themselves to these kinds of horrors. And so then Chemosh yet another one of the demon gods of the Canaanites and the goddess Artemis. So all these false gods, just look at the summary of the falsehoods that men have made.

And it's astonishing that they would forsake the living God and go for that. And killing innocent people and building high places to these things, supposing that those things, demons, will suffice. I've told you before about gods and about these gods that we have and they're- we may be more subtle, but we have our own gods and there are various forms of idolatry here.

It may not be that we're bowing down to an altar, but we still have these altars. And kind of the strange thing is there's a little bit of all 10 of these in all of us in various proportions and combinations. One person is this, this is his range, from low to high, whereas this guy is totally Mr. Red's different, Mr. Blue's totally different. But here's the point: not a one of these demons or these gods or whatever you want to call them, although they may appear to be more subtle, will give you what you're looking for.

What are men really looking for? Are they looking for these things? They suppose these things will promise what they really long for. But what they long for: security, significance, satisfaction. They're looking for this. That's what people want. Not a one of these things or any combination thereof will provide what people are looking for altogether, the fruit of the spirit. That's what men want, but they'll never find it by the worship of these false gods in all their unique combinations.

John Calvin in his Institutes in the first books described the human heart as an idol-making factory. We invent and create our own idols. But these are idols for destruction, anything that's less than infinity and eternity. If you were meant for an eternal and infinite relationship with the one who began and made all things, any desire in which you fix that is not infinite and eternal would be deficient for you. It would not be enough, it would not be big enough.

The text continues to break the jar in the sight of the men and so forth. So the image of a broken clay pot is a symbol of judgment and destruction which was common in the Ancient Near East. Then another the next text: "Then Jeremiah came from Topheth where the Lord had sent him to prophesy and he stood in the court of the Lord's house and said to all the people, 'Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, behold I'm about to bring on this city and all its towns the entire calamity that I've declared against it because they have stiffened their necks so as not to heed my words.'"

Again, imagine waking up in the morning, "Now I have to deliver this message to these stubborn people." That'd be a great day. One day to be rejected and spurned and push back. It was not an enviable task, was it? Because he knew very well as his own message predicted, "No, each of us is going to do what we want to do, we're going to reject you and the calamity of which you speak will in fact not be in matter that of our concern."

So they succumbed to that destruction and even then in the end they still had rebellion that it was not fully purged out of them. Although I will say this, that after the Babylonian captivity, you do not see the Jews succumbing to idolatry anymore. That was the one thing that finally burned that out of them. They had other idols for destruction, but it wasn't the physical gods that you had.

But in any rate, they stiffened their necks so as not to heed my words and every day would be a day in which they would be doing that, they're stiffening their necks and not heeding his words. So they've broken all these things, they've failed to see the purposes of God in his life and in their lives. So we go to this concept in our text in Jeremiah 31. I want to pull out one thing about the new covenant.

It is also mentioned in Ezekiel 36 when he speaks about prophesying to the people. And he says the word of the Lord came to me and he says, "I poured wrath out on them and I scattered them among the nations. But thus says the Lord, I'm going to vindicate my holiness, I'm going to take you from the nations, I'm going to sprinkle clean water from you, I'm going to give you a new heart."

So particularly beginning with verse 25 because I'm going to take you from the nations, I'm going to gather you from all the lands at which I sent you out, all the nations and I'm going gather you from the north, east, south, and west, bring you into your own land, I'm going sprinkle clean water on you and you'll be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.

Moreover I will give you a new heart and put my spirit within you. That's the dimensions. It is not called the new covenant here, but it's the same concept, it's the exact same description: a new heart and putting a new spirit, removing the heart of stone from your flesh and giving you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statues and you will be careful to observe my ordinances, you'll live in this land.

And so if we go to our text here in chapter 31: "The days are coming when I will make a new covenant," now he's calling it a new covenant, "with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not like the covenant which I made with her fathers on the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt." Because that was a punitive word, but this new covenant is going to be grace-filled.

He says, "My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them." They betrayed me, but yet it was impossible for them to keep this covenant because they chose not to follow me. "This is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the Lord. And again, this is the same description that you just heard in Ezekiel 36. "I will put my law within them, on their heart I will write it. I will be their God and they shall be my people."

They shall not teach again each man his neighbor and each man his brother saying "Know the Lord," for they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest of them, declares the Lord. "For I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more." So this makes me think of those covenants. And when we look at the covenants, remember that there was one key covenant at the beginning: this Abrahamic covenant which was an unconditional covenant in Genesis chapter 12 and repeated in chapter 15.

And in that promise you had that he would be a blessing to all the nations of the world and it would be a blessing to the land, the seed and the blessing. So so we go to Genesis chapter 12 and he says, "Go forth from your country, from your relatives, from your father's house, to the land which I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I'm going bless you, make your name great. You'll be a blessing and I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you I will curse and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed."

So we're going back to this idea, it had to do with a land. It's usually called the Palestinian covenant, which I don't like because the word is never used in the New Testament. It's a pejorative term that was invented by the Romans calling them Philistines. And so why would you use it? It even says Palestine, it's not in the Bible, don't use it. It's Israel, the land of Canaan or whatever.

But it's what I call the land promise that there was in Deuteronomy. The seed, the Davidic there will always be someone and there would be a blessing that through all the nations of the world you would be a blessing. So the three covenants, the land, seed, and blessing covenant then turned out to be aspects of the eternal covenant, the unconditional covenant in Abraham.

But the Mosaic law was a different thing altogether because that was a temporary and partial thing that would ultimately stop and it would stop with the cross. So the law was fulfilled in Christ because you see no one could possibly keep the Mosaic law. So Jesus came not to break the law, but to fulfill it. Only the God-man could do that and the only way you could do that is if he had no sin nature.

And the only way you could have no sin nature was to have no father, earthly father. Because the sin of Adam was conceptually passed on from the seed to the next seed to one generation to the next generation. How will he be God and not yet be sinful? And this mystery about the Holy Spirit will come upon you and that will be in fact the genesis of this new being, of this new thing. Now the very one who made the body and made DNA, I think he'est perfectly capable of doing that.

So the whole idea of parthenogenesis, the virgin birth, don't think of that as a greater miracle than the creation of one cell because he's the one who can make that and brings it to being. So all these things then are part of his divine sovereignty and his power. And so here is one who though he was fully human but he was also fully God. So he fulfilled the Mosaic law. "I came to fulfill it."

And so the law came through Moses, as John says, grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. So that you have in the New Testament then the apostles and ultimately the church being brought with him into the kingdom of God. And so you have this whole new vision of what life is meant to be about in that context. So going back to our text of scripture then we realize that we have a vision of what life is meant to be like and it's a life that is meant to be judged and ruled by righteousness and holiness of the truth.

So we conclude our text and say that the days are coming when this city's going to be rebuilt for the Lord, it's going to go out and the valley of dead bodies and the ashes as far as the brook Kidron, it will not be plucked out or overthrown anymore. So it's a word who speaks about who gives the sun and the fixed order of the moon. "If this fixed order departs from before me, the offspring of Israel also cease from being a nation."

So these promises that ultimately they will know each one will know and will be known by me is the picture of the new covenant blessings that Jesus has made available for us. Now I've kept a little extra time for us so we could just discuss the implications of this new covenant and or other things that have come to your mind. Where'd I find this chart? It's a good chart, as charts go, it's a good chart except for the Palestinian, but what are you going call it? The Israel land covenant.

But at any rate, it's a good chart. You can find these charts was an internet search that brought me to this one, yeah. They're very good things. I should mention as well while I'm at it since we've got you here, I might as well mention this before I do this, go out of here, go to spiritual, go here, go there. Am I- yeah, there we go. This is something I want you to try out now. And this is I hope it will.

It's on the website now too under resources? Oh, it's also under resources, okay. Let's hope it opens up. Let me try using my own phone and just go to the Wi-Fi here and go to my phone and use my as a hotspot. Do better. Now let me go back to where we were. Opens it up here and you'll see it under resources as Michael has mentioned. But this is some I want you to try out. So you have thousands of things that are connected to this.

If I were to look at these resources here and I can expand this make it a little bit bigger here I think. How do you do it, Michael? I know it can be pulled over here. Ah, there we go, it's harder but I got it now. So here is the discovery. So in this case, a life of wisdom I happen to be in Genesis 1, but whatever text you go to so you can choose a chapter of the Bible.

So if you wanted to choose for example, Jeremiah 31 offers one of the most helpful promises in all scripture, a promise that God would one day create a new covenant that transforms the human heart. So this is taken, this is closed AI and it's taken from my content, and that's how it works. And so the more specific your question, the more you can get out of it, and so it's very useful.

Begins by affirming everlasting love, the heart of the chapter, I will put my law in their hearts, just as we've been saying here, and then the fulfillment: "This is my blood of the new covenant." Jeremiah 31 reminds us even in seasons of discipline and loss, his mercy and faithfulness. So you have that, you have the Reflections Ministries over here, you have the Ask Ken here, and then you have the discovery. So that here, the clarity of the new covenant.

So I can choose to go off of here and go back to the books of the Bible and go to Philippians 4 and then if I go to discovery it's going to be relating to that. So the text that will come up will be related to Philippians. Makes sense? So these are like videos and other context. So I want you to try that Ask Ken. It's really a whole study Bible and it's pretty impressive. Does our discovery resources mention the video, how to use it? I'm not sure. Okay. Because there's a little video that my friend made to make that happen.

I do. I just wanted to- I figured I had a little extra time so I wanted to show this to you because I want to get your feedback from it. And one last thing before we do that and it's going to be this. I want to show you one other thing and then we'll do it. Because if I go to resources, I go to the website KenBoa.org and just go to resources, and then you have the blog, Reflections U which is the learning platform, books, Bibles, and more, weekly studies, teaching letter, Daily Growth email, the Explorers podcast videos and Recalibrate toolbox.

The Boa Study Bible is down here, you see so it brings you right there. So the other thing I would like you to look at besides that is go back where I was here. So go to resources and go to weekly studies here. And this is where you see the link here for our study here and you can watch it on YouTube or Vimeo and watch in the Zoom and Friday morning the same. So it's very useful, very useful to have.

If I go back there for a moment, I saw I go back to my resources and then one last thing is going to be the Reflections U learning platform. We're adding new things to it here and we're going to keep on adding new materials here. And this would be one that I would very much want you to try out. Anyway, there we are. But give us feedback on that and getting up there too one last thing I will do is mention this because I don't want to forget now that we've got you here.

I'm in the wrong one here, I want to go to Handbook to Prayer. Here we go. So this is the first one, Day 8, I've brought if you don't have a copy of this yet, take one from here. Also take a copy of Jesus in his own words. Try reading just the red letters. It'd be very interesting exercise. You can do it very quickly, I found it to be quite an experience. So these are we brought them for you.

And so what I want you to do, though, is to remember the idea is to give a seven minutes. You can go through it in seven minutes. You can do it longer of course, but you can go through this: adoration, confession, renewal, petition, intercession, affirmation, thanksgiving and a closing prayer. That's today. Imagine if all of us were praying that same thing every day. There the power goes on because you would literally be on the same page with everyone else.

Am I making sense there? And that's why it's a three-month process because it's a cycle: one month forms a habit, three months solidifies it, and then you go back to month one. But there's something powerful about having form and freedom and praying scripture back to God and making it elevating our thoughts above what we would have thought ourselves. But I love the idea of our doing it as a collective discipline. That's the end of my little announcement.

Guest (Male): Thanks for the opportunity to speak. By the way, is your online Study Bible going to go to print as well?

Dr. Ken Boa: No, it's a digital Bible. And it's going be animated because we're going to be adding lots new stuff. I'm scanning my seminary notes right now even as we speak.

Imagine, that's a lot of stuff in there and other things as well. So we're scanning stuff and we're also making other things available that were not available before. So the more we add, the more robust the feature becomes. That's the whole point, it's built upon that content. So it's fun to see that happen, yeah.

Guest (Male): I wanted to share just a couple brief passages on Jeremiah 31:31 and 32 I often think of together.

Dr. Ken Boa: Is this a question or-

Guest (Male): Oh, I thought I misunderstood earlier, I thought-

Dr. Ken Boa: It's a Q&A.

Guest (Male): I thought, okay.

Dr. Ken Boa: What's your question?

Guest (Male): Okay, so can you talk a bit about the internalization of Jeremiah 31 and the imprint on the heart, turning the heart to flesh from stone?

Dr. Ken Boa: It has to do with the idea of Christ's receive the Holy Spirit. And so when they received the Holy Spirit, they became different men. And remember what happened on Pentecost. So what happens is you're baptized in the spirit when you become a member of the body of Christ. You have the Holy Spirit in you. And when you have the Holy Spirit in you, you can then do the things that are of the spirit, if that makes sense.

So the idea of receiving the Holy Spirit is what I think internalizes it. So the idea of his law is in you. Those who are not in the spirit cannot please God. Interesting statement that is, isn't it? So if you don't have the Holy Spirit in you, your best efforts will not be pleasing to him. So that's the genius of this thing. He put his law, his spirit in us and now you're dwelt not only by the Holy Spirit but by the son of God, you in me and I in you. And now the father as well, John 14. Deeply profound and mysterious. So that would relate to your question. Yes.

Guest (Male): You may have just responded to it, but how do we focus on some aspect of the world without slipping into idolatry over whatever that aspect is?

Dr. Ken Boa: Repeat that question, I want to make sure I get that.

Guest (Male): How do we- how do we focus on some aspect of the world-

Dr. Ken Boa: Focus on an aspect of the world.

Guest (Male): Without slipping into that lure?

Dr. Ken Boa: Yes. I think one can be aware of what's going on without having to succumb to it. And it's a very interesting thing once again. But I haven't shown you this before, remember my deal here. Because you take the opposite of Philippians 4:8 and you have the news. So my point here is that a lot of it's going to depend- you can be aware of it without being granular.

So I choose not to be a news hound. I'm aware basically of what's going on. I see patterns, though, that are painfully obvious. And so but I don't want to live there. I want my world-to-word ratio to be more like 1 to 10. And most believers are 10 to 1. What's wrong with that? Let's talk about it. Let me ask you this question in Philippians 4:8, what's the last part? Is that an imperative or not?

It is, it's a command. He says "dwell." Does it mean therefore that I'm disobeying him when I'm dwelling on the things of the opposite? I'll let you be the judge. But then my view- I think I need to be brutally honest about myself and realize the degree to which I am drawn by these things because it's so incredibly volatile.

But then what'll happen is the more you get sucked into that miasma, what's going to happen is you're going to be paralyzed with frustration of something you can't do anything about in the first place and you're going to become- you won't have peace. I think we've been called to have peace in this world, even though the world is chaotic. But that peace which transcends comprehension is in part embedded by that on which we fix our heart.

What's- you had another thought? Thank you. Yes, and your question, yeah.

Guest (Male): Can I- I just wanted to put in a word that as you- this incredible tool that you've created, this study, I just hope you have somewhere in there a study, curated study of The Far Side.

Dr. Ken Boa: Man, I would do it. It might have to be password protected so that only those of us from Winsight- if I knew Larson, I would do it. Well, it's really important. Thank you, that's very- I would that I could do it because as far as I know, I'm the only one who exegetes The Far Side the way I do it, where you just show a little bit, a slow reveal, so you get about five laughs out of what would have ordinarily been one.

The guy's a genius. I'm just un-unrevealing his greatness. But we'll never be allowed to do it. It's a shame, isn't it? Yes. You're rather quiet today. Well, I think that this is an important perspective for us to embrace, that we want to really think about what do I fix my mind on. I'm going leave you with this little diagram that I had before and it's this idea: I want you to really ask yourself "What do I seek?"

So really it comes back to this spiritual renewal, as you well know, and it's really this: what do I seek? And to trust the father- this has become my vitality, the center where I live here. I sometimes zoom out to the right, left and right, but this is where I live. And then the triune God and then God is whole, "The Lord your God is one." So you have the triunity of God.

So what do I want more than anything else is the question I need to ask myself throughout the course of the day. What do you seek? What do you want to have? Because you become defined by that which you seek. I hope that makes sense. They will not teach again each man his neighbor because they're going to know me, the least of them to the greatest. I'll forgive their iniquity and their sin I'll remember no more.

And it seems to me that this is related to a new covenant blessing that they will know me. But it also seems to hint at a kingdom manifestation as well, something that's going to be true when Messiah is ruling and reigning on the earth. Because my own view is that we will rule and reign with Christ as his bride over that thousand-year reign of Christ.

And so here when we speak about Israel specifically in that context, that they're going to know me, they're going to forgive their sin. And part of the whole idea is after their purgation and the regathering of Israel at the end of the seven-year tribulation, the kingdom is then inaugurated by the King of Kings and then all Israel has been saved by that time.

So it would seem then that's what it's relating to, it's kind of an eschatological promise as well. But it's also in our time. We already see right now the benefits of the new covenant, even now. Because right now, and this is a lovely thought, you and I are living in the power of the Spirit and we're seated with him in the right hand of God, that you have been given all power and authority and dominion in Christ Jesus.

So you are living in the power of the resurrected Christ. Strength with all power according to his glorious might to the attaining of all steadfastness and patience. He's given you the power of the age to come in this present darkness. That's a rather nice thought. He's given you already what's to come, but that kingdom power, the resurrection, is coming, so we're living the future in the now.