In 23:5 and 6 Jeremiah prophesied that a righteous Shoot would be raised up to David to face the situation and meet the need, and His name would be called Jehovah our righteousness. This implies redemption and also justification, for it is this One who redeemed us and became our righteousness that we might receive God's justification. In this way our situation with God has been appeased.
Now, based on Christ's redemption and God's justification, with Christ as our righteousness, God is free to enter into us as the Triune God, as Jesus Christ, as the life-giving Spirit. He has come into us to be our life, our life supply, our life law, our life capacity, and our everything that we may be constituted with God in His life and nature to be His enlargement, His increase, His fullness, for His expression. We will be such an expression of God first in the church age, then in the age of restoration (the age of the millennial kingdom), and ultimately and consummately in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth for eternity. The New Jerusalem will be the embodiment of God's new covenant. The new covenant, therefore, will ultimately issue in the New Jerusalem.
We have seen that Revelation 21:24 speaks of the nations around the New Jerusalem. Jeremiah also speaks of the nations in chapters forty-six through fifty-one. Actually, the nations in the new heaven and new earth will eventually come from the nations concerning which Jeremiah prophesied. This is a further indication that the book of Jeremiah is complete, even all-inclusive.
Why does Jeremiah prophesy concerning the nations? He does this because God needs them. On the one hand, God needs a people to express Him; on the other hand, He needs another people to look at, to behold, this expression. We may say that those who express God are the "actors" and that those who witness this expression are the "spectators." For the fulfillment of His purpose, God needs both the actors—His chosen people—and the spectators—the nations. Therefore, the book of Jeremiah, following the spiritual sequence in the Bible, includes Jeremiah's speaking concerning the nations. In this matter he is the same as Isaiah, Daniel, and Zechariah. As we will see, the principle is the same with the books of the Minor Prophets.