“Instead, they will serve the LORD their God and David their king,
whom I will raise up for them.”
Jeremiah 30:9
At this time in Israel’s history, David had been dead a long time. But every Jew knew what this promise entailed. At least, they thought they knew. God would send His Messiah to restore the nation of Israel and get rid of Israel’s enemies. When the Israelites heard that they would once again serve God and Messiah, they had reason to rejoice.
Because some of these messianic prophecies were delivered while Israel was in bondage, they may have simply assumed that the Messiah would be a strong military leader. To rid the world of Israel’s enemies would be a mighty feat for any man. We definitely know that this attitude was how the leaders in Jesus’ time felt. But instead of a mighty warrior or a deliverer in any classical sense of the word, God sent Himself to deliver His own people from the strongest chains that they could ever have been shackled with: their own sin. What they failed to realize time and time again was that occupation and servitude to their enemies was a punishment for sin, and not the sin itself.