Now this is important to us because we are living in days of decadence. We are living at a time when all the 19th century evangelical strengths, the great number of gospel churches that were then throughout the land with large congregations; all that has gone. Now we are down to a small remnant. Even so, there are still problems. You wonder if the full course of downward trend has run its course. God will do nothing for the generation that took things down, even if they are truly blood-bought people who love the Lord. But everything has languished, the work has gone down, sins have been committed, duties have been left undone. How will God revive his people? With a new generation. That is always the way God has worked. You look at back across the history of this land and you see it is exactly the same. You see a great period of church planting, a golden age of church expansion, great blessing, revival power, much gospel preaching, and the tide is coming in. And then you'll get a languishing period when the people of God take everything for granted, and they go into a new phase. There is decline, another generation takes over, rests on the laurels of the previous generation. It doesn't do the work; it is not a spiritual, it is not as concerned, it begins to compromise. It is guilty of all manner of decadence and betrayal of the cause. What happens? Does God revive them? No. You will find that God will raise up a new tradition. You see it in this country. You get the great golden age of church expansion among the Baptists and the Independents in the late 17th century, early 18th century, but these men went into decline. They became doctrinally top-heavy and cold and disinterested in soul-winning, even at a time when there were thousands of them still in the land who were born again Christians. God raised up the whole Wesleyan, Whitfield revival tradition. God raised up in a new generation, a new body of preachers. Then when their turn came and they gave way to successors, to sons and daughters, to another generation that were not worthy of them, God raises up a new group. It will be exactly the same in our day and age. The old status quo of British evangelicalism: that has failed for many years. God will raise up something new. Even though he may still love us, still keep us secure in our salvation, and one day glorify us for all eternity, if we as the people of God quench the Spirit, prefer our man-made traditions to the living work of God, lose our enthusiasm and our concern and our vigour for souls, prefer compromise to trusting God and so on, then God will transfer his work elsewhere and raise up another generation.
The prophecy of course is in the context of Jeremiah's many prophecies of the captivity, which is now immediately ahead for the people of Judah. There will be a return – we will see that more explicitly – of a remnant of them to Judah and Jerusalem, and that return would be characterised by a new era of better prophets and teachers, at least for a while. But the prophecy doesn't stop there. It encompasses not only the return of the remnant from captivity, but it covers the coming of Christ and the New Testament age, and indeed the eternal heavenly hereafter. There is a one, two, three stage arrangement in all these prophecies, but very often the prophecy seems to be of a single event, and that is characteristic of the Old Testament prophets. They all saw the two comings of Christ – his incarnation and his coming for the beginning of the gospel age, his work of salvation, and his second coming, his return in power and glory, and the beginning of that everlasting reign – as one event. That's not strictly accurate. They didn't mislead the people; the Old Testament prophets were not misleading. They didn't say explicitly it was one event, but they prophesied both events together, and they did not distinguish between them. Only in Isaiah do you begin to get a glimpse of the separation between the two events, and in the post-exile minor prophets – Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi – you see the hints of a gap between the events. But generally speaking, the Old Testament sees the coming, the redeeming work, and a glorious return, finally, of Christ, all as if it were one great grand future occurrence. So it is here: ‘I will set up shepherds over them’, but there are three elements in the prophecy. Because the return of the remnant after seventy years from Babylon was also a kind of shadow of things to come. It was a partial literal fulfilment of these prophecies; they would literally return to their natural land, and they would literally rebuild the house of God. But that was only a shadow of a future, spiritual event: the coming of Christ and the setting up of New Testament era, and in due course, the gathering of the people of God together totally for the eternal hereafter. ‘I will set up shepherds over them which will feed them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking.’ After the return that was true for a time of the returnees from Babylon. They had Ezra and Nehemiah and other godly men as leaders. But then the people sinned again and they fell, and discipline returned and times of difficulty, but they enjoyed a measure of fulfilment of this prophecy. But then the ultimate fulfilment would be when Christ came, and the New Testament church – saved Jews and saved Gentiles together – came about. Then this became spiritually true. They shall fear no more, nor be dismayed. The doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. Those who are truly saved are secure and cannot be lost. And should they backslide, God, by discipline or whatever means he chooses, will bring them back.