Scripture Reading: Jer. 2:13; 17:9; 13:23; 23:5-6; 33:16; 31:33-34

DAY 1 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 2 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 3 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 4 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 5 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 6 Outline　MorningRevival

«　WEEK 2　DAY 1　»

　　Jer. 2:13 For My people have…forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew out for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, which hold no water.

　　Isa. 12:3-6 …You will draw water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation…[and say], Give thanks to Jehovah; call upon His name! Make His deeds known among the peoples….Sing psalms to Jehovah….Cry out and give a ringing shout…

　　The book of Jeremiah may be likened to a walnut: on the outside there is a hard shell, and on the inside there is a kernel….Gradually, the Lord has opened the shell of Jeremiah and has shown me the kernel….Therefore, I have the burden to speak a word concerning the kernel of the book of Jeremiah.

　　This kernel includes three matters—what God wants from us, what we are in our fallen condition, and what Christ is to us. Jeremiah strongly presents these three matters to us, but they are concealed within the shell. In order to see these three things, we need to “crack” the shell of Jeremiah and concentrate on the kernel inside.

　　What God wants from us is mentioned mainly in 2:13, which reveals that God is the fountain of living waters. God wants us to take Him as the fountain of living waters for our living. This means that He wants us to take Him as the source, the fountain, of our being. How can we take Him as our source? The only way to take God as the fountain of living waters is to drink of Him day by day. By drinking we take into us the living water that issues from God as the fountain. (Life-study of Jeremiah, p. 259)

　　The most evil thing in the eyes of God is to forsake Him as the source, as the fountain of living waters, and to turn to some other source. All other sources are idols. In this verse the idols are likened to broken cisterns, which cannot hold water. People today are busy hewing out for themselves all kinds of cisterns. Actually, these cisterns are idols. As we consider this situation, we need to realize that God wants us to take Him as the fountain, the source, of our life and our being. (Life-study of Jeremiah, p. 260)

　　The way to receive God as our salvation is to draw water from the springs of salvation, that is, to drink Him (Psa. 36:8; John 4:14; 7:37; 1 Cor. 12:13; Rev. 22:17). To be our salvation, the Triune God was processed to become the life-giving Spirit as the living water, the water of life (1 Cor. 15:45; John 7:37-39; Rev. 21:6; 22:1, 17). When the living water enters into us, it permeates our entire being, causing us to be nourished, transformed, conformed, and glorified (Rom. 12:2; 8:29-30). Both the Old Testament and the New Testament show that God’s practical salvation is the processed Triune God Himself as the living water. (Isa. 12:3, footnote 1) The fountain is the source, the spring is the gushing up, the issue, of the source, and the river is the flow. The term the springs of salvation [Isa. 12:3] implies that salvation is the source, that is, the fountain. God as our salvation is the fountain (v. 2); Christ is the springs of salvation for our enjoyment and experience (John 4:14); and the Spirit is the flow of this salvation within us (John 7:38-39).

　　Christ as the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45) is the many springs of salvation gushing up from the fountain of the Triune God’s salvation, from whom the believers may draw the water of life for their enjoyment (Isa. 12:3a; John 4:14; Rev. 21:6). As God incarnated, Christ is the very embodiment of the Triune God (John 1:14a; Col. 2:9). Jesus, Jehovah our Savior and our salvation (Matt. 1:21), has become the source of our eternal salvation through the process of His vicarious death for the accomplishing of God’s eternal redemption (Heb. 5:9; 9:12). Based on His redemption, He as our Redeemer becomes our Savior and our salvation. (Isa. 12:3, footnote 2)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Jeremiah, msgs. 1, 40; Life-study of Isaiah, msgs. 40, 11

«　WEEK 2　DAY 2　»

　　John 4:10 Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, Give Me a drink, you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.

　　14 But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall by no means thirst forever; but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life.

　　The Triune God flows in the Divine Trinity in three stages….[In John 4:14], when the fountain springs up, that is the fountain emerging. Then a river flows. The Father is the fountain, the Son is the spring, and the Spirit is the river.

　　This flowing Triune God is “into eternal life.” The Greek preposition translated as “into” is rich in meaning. Here it speaks of the destination. The eternal life is the destination of the flowing Triune God. A fountain is in us springing up as a river into a destination. This destination is the eternal life. The New Jerusalem is the totality of the divine, eternal life. The eternal life eventually will be the New Jerusalem. Thus, into eternal life means into the New Jerusalem. We must have something flowing into that divine New Jerusalem in order for us to arrive there. The entire Bible is needed to interpret John 4:14. The Father is the fountain as the source, the Son is the spring, the Spirit is the flowing river, and this flowing issues in the eternal life, which is the New Jerusalem. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 4, “Crystallization-study of the Gospel of John,” p. 455)

　　The Triune God is flowing through the Father, the Son, and the Spirit into us. When we drink of this water, it becomes a fountain in us. We all should say, “The fountain is in me!” This fountain emerges as a spring, and the spring flows out as a river for the New Jerusalem. This is the key to open up the entire Gospel of John. This is the divine speaking, divine spreading, divine dispensing, of the Divine Trinity….When He flows into us, He flows with us. He will flow us into the New Jerusalem to be the New Jerusalem. The preposition into also means “to become.” Into the New Jerusalem means “to become the New Jerusalem.”…We have to be the New Jerusalem; then we can be in the New Jerusalem. This is the intrinsic significance of the Gospel of John and Revelation.

　　Thus, the New Jerusalem is the issue of God’s flowing in three stages: in the Father’s stage, in the Son’s stage, and in the Spirit’s stage. All three stages are in us. We have the fountain, the spring, and the river within us at the same time. The fountain emerges, the spring gushes, and the gushing is the flowing as a river into the New Jerusalem. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 4, “Crystallization-study of the Gospel of John,” pp. 457-458)

　　God’s intention in His economy is to be the fountain, the source, of living waters to satisfy His chosen people for their enjoyment. The goal of this enjoyment is to produce the church as God’s increase, God’s enlargement, to be God’s fullness for His expression. This is the heart’s desire, the good pleasure (Eph. 1:5, 9), of God in His economy. The full development of this thought is in the New Testament, but it is sown as a seed in Jeremiah 2:13.

　　God’s economy is to dispense Himself as the living water to produce His increase, His enlargement, to be His expression. This thought is developed in the writings of John….In John 4 the Lord Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman concerning living water (vv. 10, 14). In John 7:38 He said, “He who believes into Me, as the Scripture said, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.”…Revelation 22:1 and 2 show us that in the New Jerusalem the river of life flows and that in this river grows the tree of life as the life supply to support and sustain the entire city. (Life-study of Jeremiah, pp. 17-18)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 4, “Crystallization-study of the Gospel of John,” msg. 14; Life-study of Exodus, msgs. 42-45; Life-study of Jeremiah, msg. 3

«　WEEK 2　DAY 3　»

　　Jer. 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is incurable; who can know it?

　　13:23 Can the Cushite change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then you also may be able to do good, who are accustomed to do evil.

　　Another aspect of the kernel of the book of Jeremiah is the exposure of what we are in our fallen condition. In this matter Jeremiah is very deep but also very simple. In 17:9 he speaks regarding the human heart….Our heart is deceitful to the uttermost and incurable. Just as our heart is incurable, so our fallen nature is unchangeable [cf. 13:23] ….In our fallen condition we are corrupt and rotten; there is no way for us to change, correct, or improve ourselves. The disciples of Confucius tried to use his teachings to improve themselves, but they have failed. (Life-study of Jeremiah, pp. 260-261)

　　Even this word [in Jeremiah 17:9] regarding the deceitful and incurable heart of man is related to God’s economy with His dispensing. Although man’s heart is corrupt and deceitful and its condition is incurable, even such a heart can be a tablet upon which God writes His law of life (31:33; cf. 2 Cor. 3:3). This reveals that God has a way to impart Himself into man. Once He has come into man, God will spread from man’s spirit into his heart. This is God’s way, according to His economy, to deal with the heart of fallen man. (Jer. 17:9, footnote 1)

　　Having forsaken God as the source, the fountain of living waters (Jer. 2:13), Israel became evil, having a heart that was deceitful above all things and incurable (17:9) and having an unchangeable sinful nature, like the Cushite’s skin and the leopard’s spots, which cannot be changed. This exposes the true condition of fallen man. (Jer. 13:23, footnote 1)

　　Isaiah responded to the vision of Christ in glory [Isa. 6:1-7] by saying, “Woe is me, for I am finished!” (v. 5a). As a result of seeing this vision, Isaiah was terminated, finished. Isaiah went on to say, “For I am a man of unclean lips, / And in the midst of a people of unclean lips I dwell” (v. 5b). By this we can see that we must pay attention to our lips, to our speaking. Every day we talk too much. A great percentage of the words we speak are evil, because most of our words are words of criticism….This is the reason that our lips are unclean. Unclean things such as gossip, murmuring, and reasoning make the church life taste like vinegar. If we eliminate gossip, murmuring, and reasoning, we may find that we have very little to talk about. Like Isaiah, we need to realize that our lips are unclean.

　　Everyone who truly sees a vision of the Lord is enlightened. The vision he sees immediately exposes him and brings him into light. When Peter saw the Lord in Luke 5, he immediately said to the Lord, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord” (v. 8). How much we realize concerning ourselves depends on how much we see the Lord. For this reason, we need a revival every morning. The morning revival is the time for us to see the Lord again. The more we see the Lord, the more we see what we are. We realize that there is nothing good within us and that everything within us is without splendor or virtue. Although Isaiah knew that he was finished and that he was a man of unclean lips, he nevertheless knew that he had seen the King, Jehovah of hosts, with his eyes (Isa. 6:5c).

　　After Isaiah realized that he was unclean, he was purged by one of the seraphim, signifying the holiness of God (v. 6a). Isaiah was purged with an ember from the altar (vv. 6b-7a). This ember signifies the effectiveness of Christ’s redemption accomplished on the cross. This purging by the seraphim with an ember from the altar took away Isaiah’s iniquity and purged his sin (v. 7b). (Life-study of Isaiah, pp. 37-39)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Isaiah, msgs. 6, 34

«　WEEK 2　DAY 4　»

　　Isa. 6:5 Then I said, Woe is me, for I am finished! For I am a man of unclean lips, and in the midst of a people of unclean lips I dwell; yet my eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of hosts.

　　1 John 1:7 …If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from every sin.

　　Before his experience in Isaiah 6,…Isaiah had been cleansed, but he realized that he was still unclean. This indicates that we all need to realize that we are a totality of uncleanness. No matter how many times we may be washed, we are still unclean. We all must come to know ourselves to this extent. In our experience, whether we are clean or unclean depends on the feeling of our conscience; and the feeling of our conscience depends on our seeing the Lord. How much we see the Lord determines how much we will be cleansed. The more we see the Lord and are exposed, the more we are cleansed. When our conscience is cleansed and is void of offense, we are able to contact God. According to our enlightened conscience, we are clean, but according to the actual facts of our situation in the old creation, we are not clean….As long as we remain in the old creation, we can never be completely clean, for the old creation is unclean. We need the redemption of our body. Once our body is redeemed, we will get out of the old creation. At that time, we will be completely clean. (Life-study of Isaiah, p. 39)

　　When we live in the divine light, we are under its enlightenment, and it exposes, according to God’s divine nature and through God’s nature in us, all our sins, trespasses, failures, and defects, which contradict His pure light, perfect love, absolute holiness, and excelling righteousness. At such a time we sense in our enlightened conscience the need of the cleansing of the redeeming blood of the Lord Jesus, and it cleanses us in our conscience from all sins that our fellowship with God and with one another may be maintained. Our relationship with God is unbreakable, yet our fellowship with Him can be interrupted. The former is of life, whereas the latter is based on our living, though it also is of life….Our fellowship, which is conditional, needs to be maintained by the constant cleansing of the Lord’s blood. (1 John 1:7, footnote 3)

　　“I had heard of You by the hearing of the ear, / But now my eye has seen You; / Therefore I abhor myself, and I repent / In dust and ashes” (Job 42:5-6). This indicates that Job gained God in his personal experience (in addition to knowing God in his vain knowledge by tradition) and that he abhorred himself. Seeing God equals gaining God (Matt. 5:8). To gain God is to receive God in His element, in His life, and in His nature. Eventually, this not only makes us one with God—it even makes us a part of God. I prefer not to use the phrase one with in describing our relationship with God because to be made a part of God, to be constituted with God in His life and nature, is more than being one with God. We see God that we may be constituted with God, yet we do not have any share in the Godhead.

　　All God’s redeemed, regenerated, sanctified, transformed, conformed, and glorified people will see God’s face (Rev. 22:4). Seeing God transforms us (2 Cor. 3:18), because in seeing God we receive His element into us. As we receive God, a new element comes into us, and the old element is discharged. This metabolic process is transformation. To see God is to be transformed into the glorious image of God. This makes us a part of God that we may express God in His life and represent Him in His authority.

　　Job said not only that He saw God but also that he abhorred himself. According to our experience, the more we see God and love God, the more we abhor ourselves. The more we know God, the more we deny ourselves. (Life-study of Job, pp. 157-158)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Job, msgs. 19, 21, 30-31; The Holy Word for Morning Revival: Job, pp. 30-37, 40-41

«　WEEK 2　DAY 5　»

　　Jer. 23:5-6 …I will raise up to David a righteous Shoot; and He will reign as King and act prudently and will execute justice and righteousness in the land….And this is His name by which He will be called: Jehovah our righteousness.

　　33:16 In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell securely; and this is the name by which she will be called: Jehovah our righteousness.

　　Jehovah our righteousness [in Jeremiah 23:6] refers to Christ in His divinity, and a righteous Shoot (v. 5), to Christ in His humanity. The name here indicates that Christ, as a descendant of David, is not merely a man but is also the very Jehovah who created the heavens and the earth, selected Abraham, established the race of Israel, and was the Lord of David, the One whom he called Lord (Matt. 22:42-45; cf. Rev. 5:5; 22:16). (Jer. 23:6, footnote 1)

　　Our in Jeremiah 23:6 indicates that Christ becomes one with us to be our righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30; 2 Cor. 5:21). Christ is made our righteousness based on His redemption. As the righteous Shoot (Jer. 23:5), Christ came in the flesh as the descendant of David to die on the cross and shed His blood in order to wash away our sins and accomplish redemption (Eph. 1:7; Heb. 9:22; 1 Pet. 1:18-19). With His redemption as the basis, we can believe into Him to receive God’s forgiveness (Acts 10:43), and God can justify us (Rom. 3:24, 26), make Christ our righteousness, and clothe us with the robe of righteousness (Isa. 61:10). This opens the way for Christ as the embodiment of the Triune God (Col. 2:9) to enter into us as our life (Col. 3:4a), our inner law of life (Jer. 31:33), and our everything, to dispense Himself into our entire being for the accomplishing of God’s eternal economy. (Jer. 23:6, footnote 2)

　　God would never give up His elect yet distracted people. While He was condemning, punishing, and chastising Israel, He intended to be incarnated as a Shoot unto David so that He could be His people’s righteousness. Based on Christ’s coming as Jehovah to be their righteousness, the evil race of Israel can be restored. Eventually, Israel will manifest Christ, who is their righteousness, as their centrality (their being) and their universality (their expression). This manifestation will consummate in the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:12). (Jer. 23:6, footnote 3)

　　The third matter in the kernel of the book of Jeremiah is what Christ is to us….Although Christ is God, He became a Shoot, or Sprout, of David [Jer. 23:5]. This means that He was incarnated to be a descendant of David. As a Shoot, the Sprout, of David, Christ is tender, living, and fresh. Christ, the righteous Shoot of David, is called Jehovah our righteousness. In our fallen condition we are corrupt, sinful, deceitful, incurable, and unchangeable. How could we ever be righteous before God? In ourselves this is impossible, but we can become righteous in Christ….Based upon Christ’s redemption, God is able to forgive our sins, to forget our sins, and to justify us. Furthermore, with the redemption of Christ as the foundation, Christ Himself has become our righteousness. Not only have we been justified by God, but God has given Christ to us to be our righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30). It is a wonderful fact that Christ has become one with us to be our righteousness.

　　Outwardly, we are justified, having Christ as our righteousness, but inwardly we are still empty. Therefore, we need Christ to be something else to us. We need Christ as the divine life, the divine life that is wrought into our inner being (Jer. 31:33). This life is a law which works in us to dispense into our being all that God is in His rich being. As a result of this dispensing, this transfusing of God Himself into us, we are no longer empty. On the contrary, we are filled with the dispensing Triune God. (Life-study of Jeremiah, pp. 261-262)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Jeremiah, msg. 2; Life-study of Isaiah, msg. 47

«　WEEK 2　DAY 6　»

　　Jer. 31:31 …I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

　　33-34 …I will put My law in their inward parts and write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be My people. And…all of them will know Me…, for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.

　　In Greek the word for covenant is also the word for testament. Every proper covenant eventually becomes a testament. Before the person who enacted the covenant dies, it is the covenant. After he dies, that covenant becomes a testament. A testament in today’s terms is a will….We have the New Testament of the Bible in our hands, but this is not the reality. The reality of all the hundreds of bequests in the New Testament is Christ. Without Christ, the Bible is empty, so the real testament, the real will, is Christ. Christ is our title deed, and this title deed is in our spirit as the all-inclusive, life-giving, indwelling, consummated Spirit. (Life-study of Isaiah, p. 329)

　　The inner law of the divine life within us has the capacity to make us one with God. In this life with its law, God is our God, and we are His people. The way for God to be our God is His divine life, and the way for us to be His people is also the divine life. Eventually, in the divine life and by the working of the law of the divine life, God will be wrought into us, and we will live Him and be constituted with Him in His life and nature but not, of course, in His Godhead.

　　God wants us to take Him as our source and to drink of Him every day so that He may become the river of the water of life within us. In our fallen condition we are hopeless, utterly corrupt, incurable, and unchangeable. But Christ has come to be our righteousness and our inner life. Outwardly, He is our righteousness for us to be justified by God. Inwardly, He is the divine life to fill us, to make us one with God, and even to constitute us with God that we may live God. Then we will be a corporate Body, the organism of the Triune God. This is the kernel of the book of Jeremiah.

　　The center, the centrality, of the new covenant is the inner law of life. Jeremiah 31:33a…[indicates that] this law is not an outward law but an inward law. In its essence, this law refers to the divine life, and the divine life is nothing less than the life-giving Spirit, the all-inclusive Christ, and the processed and consummated God.

　　This law functions….In this law there is the divine capacity, and the divine capacity is almighty. This divine capacity can do everything in us for the fulfillment of God’s purpose. There is not a positive thing concerning the carrying out of God’s economy that this divine capacity is unable to do.

　　The divine capacity of the inner law of life can live God [and] cause the believers…to be constituted with God,…made the same as God in life and in nature,…[to] become His increase, His enlargement, as His fullness to express Him. This is the highest aspect of the capacity of the inner law of life.

　　The capacity of the inner law constitutes us to be the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13; Eph. 5:30)…[and] has all the abilities of all the functions of the Body….This capacity can constitute us to be the members of the Body of Christ, including all kinds of functions: those of apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers—the joints of the rich supply—and those of every part of the Body that functions in its measure (Eph. 4:11, 16). In essence the inner law of life is God in Christ as the Spirit, and in function this law has the capacity to constitute us with God and to constitute us the members of the Body of Christ with all kinds of functions, all kinds of abilities. I am happy, and even excited, to see this law operating in the saints in the Lord’s recovery. Hallelujah for this wonderful law of life! (Life-study of Jeremiah, pp. 262, 183-185)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Jeremiah, msg. 26; Life-study of Isaiah, msg. 46