Ken Boa Reflections Ministries

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

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 Jeremiah or Ezekiel and to be rejected by his people. But he's faithful to the end. He uses the sign of the potter as an object lesson, which says you have a window still before it becomes brittle. You've got that final molten moment, as it were, to use another metaphor. But even now, you can repent.

It's a bona fide offer, yet you will say no, and 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.

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 inure 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. Every time you do, it gets harder and harder, and you're not able to hear. That's what he was predicting, and indeed, it was the case.

We have another potter image here, but it's the irrevocable consequences of this broken earthenware of their apostasy, idolatry, and immorality. In other words, it has now gone over. So, he shattered the jar in their sight to portray the way God would break the people in the city. 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.

That's the backdrop for here, but we're jumping ahead later in the book. This is an incredibly important chapter. I'll explain a little bit more why, but I'm just going to tie it together here quickly and then go into more detail. He's got his prophecy about the coming New Covenant. There are two places where it mentions this idea of the New Covenant. In Jeremiah 31:31, particularly, it says that he's going to put a new covenant in your hearts. I'm going to take away the heart of stone and put a heart of flesh. I'm going to put my law in your hearts.

In other words, I'm going to actually put it inside of you. That's the New Covenant that Jesus was predicting, and that would be the covenant in his blood where it's no longer going to be external but internal. So, this whole idea is found there. It's also found in Ezekiel 36, as we'll see a little bit later.

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. It's a covenant of grace, as we're going to be seeing. 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.

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, and self-control all the time. No one can fulfill the law. But when you walk by the Spirit, you are now fulfilling the law. 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.

That's the key concept here. I want to go to just a little bit of a word about Jeremiah and how the theme and the purpose of this book clearly see God as being patient, but he's also holy. 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.

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 potter, is to illustrate that the time for repentance would soon pass. That was the theme, this urgency that's being given.

There was a defiance that you can see hardwired and built into the people themselves, a refusal. "We are going to go each of us according to the stubbornness of our hearts." They didn't even seem to connect their sin with the consequences of the Babylonian captivity. They deceived themselves into supposing that the God's prophets were wrong and that they'd be fine, that nothing was going to come upon them. Yet, the sudden destruction would be very swift and quite inevitable.

Here are causes and promises, but the remnant of the New Covenant and the New Covenant then, there's going to be the New Covenant and a remnant will be turned and they will then be given the promise of prosperity and peace.

Some of the keys to this book, because whenever I did my "Talk Thru the Bible" when I put that together in 1981, I think it was "Talk Thru the Old Testament", then I wrote in 1982 "Talk Thru the New Testament". I'm almost tempted to show you the back cover. I can't resist this thing because—don't look at that—it was back here. I found this cover here, all kinds of pretty plant pictures and so forth, but I will come up in a moment here.

That's from the back cover of "Talk Thru the New Testament" that came out in 1982 when I wrote that. The back cover—you have it right there, yeah, but the original book had a little paper jacket. The other one before was from the same year before when we were living in Roswell. So, it was fascinating to go back to that and to remember those days.

Going back to where we were before, I was thinking about the idea of Judah's last hour. I thought of the "Talk Thru the Bible", and when I wrote that, I wrote it in such a way that it would deal with the same things, deal with the theme and the purpose, and deal with all the other components. One of the components we included was key word, key verse, and key chapter.

It indeed is Judah's last hour. The 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 the Victor 9000 had 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, but very few survived. If you can think about that, Hewlett-Packard and all those things, Studebaker and these things. So, it was the same thing with computers. That was my reasoning. Good choice.

That said, this is what I commanded them, saying, "Obey my voice and I will 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.

It's a great summary of the book. It's a hard book to read, I'll be honest with you. Every time I read 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 talking to Karen, and she was up to Exodus and the plagues. There is that 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, 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 would get rid of them tomorrow." So, he had another night with the frogs. Stupidity manifest.

At any rate, the idea of refusing to hear the voice of God. So, they know it's going to come, and yet their stubbornness is in autonomy. They've healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, "Peace, peace," when there is 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.

The key chapter is the one we're looking at now, chapter 31. 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." So, that's a beautiful picture, and we're going to talk a bit more about that.

Of course, it relates to the inauguration of the New Covenant in Matthew. So, there's a clear predictive pathway. Jeremiah's contribution to the Bible, while I'm at it, while Isaiah is generally chronological, Jeremiah is 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 the Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed the wall and the city.

So, you have this Yahweh in who is seen as the sovereign creator and the Lord of all things. It's a major motif in this book, that 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. 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. 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. While Jesus came to save his people from their sin, he did not come to judge, but he will come again. 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. Ultimately, it shows he has every right to judge, and then the seal judgments and the trumpet, 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 1 and chapters 4 and 5. You have a picture there of his holiness and his awe, his majesty, his might, his dominion. You see it also in Daniel. These are motifs that remind us about that he's beyond our comprehension and he's glorious in all respects, in that he's the only true God.

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.

Loss of reverence leads to moral degradation and disillusion. 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."

So, he talks about the fact that there is a spiritual rebellion which leads to an intellectual darkness, which thirdly 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 a 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 a mediocre today. I'll be at best a thirty-fold if I'm that. But forget about a hundred-fold. Only the great can do that. Nonsense. Reward is based on faithfulness to opportunity, not on how much you were given in time, talent, and treasure. The divine equalizer is based on what you do with what you were given. Therefore, a person who had very little of time, talent, and treasure can be rewarded as much as a Saint Paul.

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 about one percent at most. But going for 30, 60, and a hundred-fold, why would you say, "I think 30 is enough"? Do you understand what I'm saying? We are anemic in our desires; we do not want enough and therefore diminishes our will, our thought life, and our choices.

So, there are changes during Jeremiah's life. It began with reformation going back to that. It goes from begins with Assyria and ends with Babylon in power. Jews are in the land; 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, been rejected, they have succumbed to the very things that he predicted would occur over his many years of ministry. All these over forty 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. 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. 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 do you want? What does Lewis say? We're half-hearted creatures fooling about with bunny and drink and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child in the slum who wants 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.

Our Heavenly Father finds our desires are not too much; they're too little. And so because you have anemic—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. You're going to tolerate all kinds of nonsense. Now we live in a world where more nonsense and more options are available than ever before. If you're not careful, you'll go with where a lot of men go. Even ministers go—I don't know what the percentage is—about thirty percent 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 about that.

But the reality is the world is very, very powerful. If you don't have a strong call, a strong vision of your life that God's calling you, you are 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 them.

So, I just say that because it's such an important theme to me, 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.

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, the Mosaic Covenant, and the Davidic Covenant. We're going to talk about that a little bit in a moment. 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. I'm using something that I've picked up, I've used other times as well from bible.org. It's a very helpful little analysis of the message. It 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 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."

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. So, this is an image that God uses as an object lesson. 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 you've got an inevitability of disaster, of wickedness. 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, they see—he sees it coming, prophesies it. So bad that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. Surprising judgment because they've forsaken Yahweh, they've worshiped foreign gods, and they've either sacrificed their children to Molech, which was a burning idol. 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.

Astarte or Asherah, really lovely looking thing. Even better looking here, these idiotic gods that they were worshiping, Baal and demon gods like Milcom, also called Moloch. 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. Thinking that these gods will protect them.

So, here's another image of one actually being done in this way. It's amazing how they could do such stupidity and yet they committed themselves to these kinds of horrors. Chemosh, yet another one of the demon gods of the Canaanites, and the goddess Artemis. All these false gods, just look at the summary of the falsehoods that men have made. It's astonishing that they would do such things to forsake the living God and go for that and killing innocent people and building high places to these things, supposing that those demons will suffice.

I've told you before about gods and about these gods that we have, and they 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. The strange thing is there's a little bit of this of all ten 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 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. So, this is a mindset that we need to embrace.

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, 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 I'm going to be rejected and spurned and pushback. 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 a matter of our concern. So, they were succumbed to that destruction, and even then in the end, they still had rebellion that 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 the idols anymore. That was the one thing that kind of finally burned that out of them. They had other idols for destruction, but it wasn't the physical gods that you had. But at any rate, you had 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, stiffening their necks and not heeding his words. So, they broke all these things, they've failed to see the purposes of God in their lives.

So, we go to this concept in our text in Jeremiah 31. The New Covenant is also mentioned in Ezekiel 36 when he speaks about prophesying to the people. 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 gather you from all the lands in which you were sent, and I'm going to gather you from the north, east, south, and west, bring you into your own land. I'm going to sprinkle clean water from you. 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. 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 statutes, and you will be careful to observe my ordinances. You'll live in this land."

If we go to our text here and look at our Jeremiah text 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 their 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."

This makes me think of those covenants. 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. 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.

Let's see the thing exactly. If we go to Genesis for a moment, Genesis chapter 12. 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 to bless you, make your name great. You will 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."

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. 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, 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'll be a blessing.

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 do what? Not to violate it but to fulfill it. Only the God-man could do that, and the only way he could do that is if he had no sin nature. The only way he 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, from 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 thing.

The very one who made the body and made DNA, I think he's perfectly capable of doing that. So, the whole idea of parthenogenesis, the virgin birth, don't think of that as some—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.

So, here is one who, though he was fully human, 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 you have the apostles and ultimately the church being brought with them into the kingdom of God. So you have this whole new vision of what the life is about in that context.

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, 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, will not be plucked out or overthrown anymore. So, it's a word which speaks about—from—who gives the sun and the fixed order of the moon. "If this fixed order departs from before me, the offspring of Israel also shall cease from being a nation." So, these promises that ultimately they will know his—each one will know and will be known by me is that picture of the New Covenant blessings that Jesus has made available for us.

I've kept a little extra time for us so we could just discuss the implications of this New Covenant and that if—or other things that have come to your mind. Oh, 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 to call it? The land covenant. But at any rate, it's a good chart. You can find these charts on—was an internet search that brought me to this one. Yeah, they're really—a very good thing.

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. There we go. This is something I want you to try out now. It's also on the website now under resources. Let's hope it opens up; it may not. Let me try using my own 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 something I want you to try out. So you have thousands of things that are connected to this. So, if I were to look at these resources here—how do you do it, Michael? You know it can be pulled over here. There we go.

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. It 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 part here, and then you have the discovery. So 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 content.

But I want you to try that "Ask Ken", so it's really—it's a whole study Bible and it's pretty impressive. Michael, doesn't our resources mention how to use the video? I'm not sure. Okay, because there's a little video that my friend made to make that happen. 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 so, 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, go to the website kenboa.org and just go to resources, and then you have the blog Reflections U, which is a 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.

The other thing I would like you to look at as well, besides that, is the 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 it in Zoom and Friday morning is the same. So it's very useful, very useful to have. 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 material here. This would be one that I would very much want you to try it out.

But give us feedback on that. As he's 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 want to go to Handbook to Prayer. Here we go. So, this is the first one, day 8. 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; be a very interesting exercise. I found it to be quite an experience. So, these are—we brought them for you.

What I want you to do, though, is to remember the idea is to give a—call it 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's power in that 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.

If you miss a few days, what happens? You don't beat yourself up; you go to that day. 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. It's animated, because we're going to be adding lots of 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 it'll—the more we add, the more robust the feature becomes. That's the whole point, it's based upon that content. So, it's fun to see that happen.

Guest (Male): I wanted to share just a couple brief passages on Jeremiah 31:31 and 32 I often think of together. Is this a question or—I misunderstood earlier, I thought it was a Q&A.

Dr. Ken Boa: It is a Q&A. 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—giving me—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 he—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.

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, you can't—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 and me and I and you, and now the Father as well (John 14). Deeply profound and mysterious. So, that would relate to your question.

Guest (Male): How do we focus on some aspect of the world without slipping into idolatry over whatever that aspect is? Repeat that question. How do we focus on some aspect of the world without slipping into that lure?

Dr. Ken Boa: 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've 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 one to ten. And most believers are ten to one. What's wrong with that?

Let's think. In Philippians 4:8, 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 in 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 totally—you're going to paralyze 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 on which we fix our hearts. What you—you had another thought?

Guest (Male): I just wanted to put in a word that this incredible tool that you've created, this study—I just hope you have somewhere in there a curated study of "The Far Side". Man, I would do it. It might have to be password protected so that only those of us from Wingate—if I knew Larson, I would do it. Well, it's really important, so I just wanted—

Dr. Ken Boa: Would that I could do it. Because as far as I know, I'm the only one who exegis "The Far Side" the way I do it, where you just show a little bit of 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-revealing 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 to 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?

The trust the Father—this is—this has become my vitality, this center right I use—this is where I live here. I sometimes zoom out to the left and right, but this is where I live. And then that's the triune God, 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 and each man his brother saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they're going to know me. From the least of them to the greatest. I'll forgive their iniquity and their sin I'll remember no more."

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.

So here, when we speak about Israel specifically in that context, that they're going to know me, he's going to forgive their sin. Part of the whole idea is after their purgation and the regathering of Israel into the—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 he's relating to more like that.

It's a 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.

Strengthened 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 of Christ, is coming, so we're living the future in the now.