The Jews believed they were the nation God had chosen among all the nations. And they were. But that did not give them immunity to God's judgment. Like the nations, they too would feel God's wrath if they refused to live in God's ways. Furthermore, God could deal with other nations in mercy as well as judgment. Jeremiah was full of surprises, as against the popular religious assumptions of his day. That's perhaps why some people, when they encountered Jesus, thought he was very like Jeremiah. He turned things upside down.

The Bible itself does not seem too bothered by the idea that talking of God suffering might in any way diminish God, or detract from his perfection. On the contrary, the Bible seems to revel in the richness of describing God in ways that reflect our own human realities.

If "gospel" means good news, then Jeremiah had some for sure. He saw the judgment coming, in horrifying technicolour. But he saw beyond it to the redeeming, restoring grace of God, and indeed he speaks of the "new covenant", which takes us to the heart of the gospel in Christ.

I agree that we should regard all books of the Bible as equally inspired - and important. But some come into sharp focus at certain times, as particularly relevant and sharp in what they have to say to our culture at any given moment of history. And Jeremiah is a book for our times.

The whole earth, then, belongs to Jesus. It belongs to him by right of creation, by right of redemption and by right of future inheritance - as Paul affirms in the magnificent cosmic declaration of Colossians 1:15-20. So wherever we go in his name, we are walking on his property. There is not an inch of the planet that does not belong to Christ. Mission then is an authorized activity carried out by tenants on the instructions of the owner of the property.

God cannot suffer - at least not as we do. It has some roots in Greek philosophy: if God is a perfect being, suffering would reduce that perfection, so God cannot suffer. More thoughtful theologians take the phrase in the sense of one of the confessions of faith that talks of God as being "without parts or passions" - he is not physical as we are, and not subject to "passions" in the sense of uncontrollable emotions that can take charge of us at times. God is not "emotional," if that word is used as some kind of weakness.

There are four accounts of the gospel itself! The momentous events of the conception, birth, life, teaching, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth are too vast to be adequately viewed from one angle alone. Just as we need several points of view to "see" a person's face, so we need these varied emphases and angles to gain the full perspective of all God wants us to understand.