The Spiritual Prophet

[Jeremiah 31:33-34] “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. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

Jeremiah strongly emphasized spiritual life. He’s known as the Spiritual Prophet because he asserted that religious rituals were meaningless if not done with sincerity. External ceremonies weren’t what mattered; God looked at the heart, at whether one was truly spiritual. Jeremiah’s point was that the focus wasn’t on physical circumcision, but on the inner being, on having the presence of God’s Spirit. However, the priests misled the people, making them believe that religious rituals could replace a devout life. What God truly desired was a life of devotion.

Jeremiah heavily stressed the spiritual dimension of faith, being a person who greatly valued spiritual matters and cared deeply about people’s spiritual lives. He was also preparing God’s people for the future loss of the Temple, when they would no longer be able to offer sacrifices because they wouldn’t have a Temple in Babylon, only synagogues. The word “synagogue” refers to a gathering of many people. Since priests couldn’t perform sacrifices at that time, the exiled people, when gathered, were to do three things: praise God, pray to God, and study the Bible. This laid the foundation for church life in the New Testament, and the synagogue worship style later became the model for Christian worship.

This is a unique emphasis in the Book of Jeremiah: Prophet Jeremiah liberated the Jews from external rituals so that God’s exiled people, even without a Temple and unable to perform sacrificial rites, could still remain God’s people.