Whenever we wonder how to talk to the people in our everyday life about Jesus, we will need a good idea of what exactly the significance was that the Messiah had for the Jewish people. We gain a lot of insight by looking to the Old Testament and hearing what message the Jews had been studying for centuries before Jesus came. Today, we find one of the proclamations that were to be written on the heart of the Jewish community.
They may be in exile, but the Lord says one day, the house of Israel and the house of Judah will be restored. One day, you will be able to return to the land that the Lord gave to you. One day, there will be a new covenant and the sins of the past will all be forgotten. The people of God will be given a fresh start and the slate will be wiped completely clean.
As I have said, with each foreshadowing biblical message of coming destruction there is always an aspect of hope conveyed within it. Our Bible never tells of a darkness that did not also carry forward the light. That light carried forward in the book of Jeremiah is our scripture we visit today.
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals. And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord. In those days they shall no longer say:
“The parents have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”
But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge.
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their master, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
Jeremiah 31:27-34 NRSV
The coming of the new covenant is foretold here in the book of Jeremiah!
I encourage all of you to read all of chapter 31. The whole chapter is full of promises of wonderful growth and rebuilding and the replenishment of what was lost. But these specific verses quoted above are held tenderly by the rest of the beautiful chapter like a soft, warm blanket fresh out of the dryer. They hold something precious: the prophecy for the coming savior, the King of the Jews.
This is huge! This is such a big deal for the Jewish people! This semester, I have been learning methods for studying biblical text. When we looked closely at the book of Matthew, the first 17 verses are Jesus’ genealogy. The line of descendants draws back from Jesus to Abraham. The way it’s listed, the 42 generations are divided into three parts (and this is why I bring it up, so you can see the significance the Jewish disciples of Jesus put upon it). The genealogy is divided into Abraham to Kind David, from King David to the exile of the Jews, and from the exile to Jesus.
This is an indication of the significance of this event. Out of all the things in all of Jewish history, this is the only event mentioned in Matthew. It isn’t like this is a particularly shining moment either. Judah was overrun, Jerusalem destroyed, and the Israelites were captive for 70 years. So why bring it up?
It is mentioned because it has direct significance to the coming Messiah. It is the point in history when everything really started building directly to the birth of Christ.
The way things were done throughout the Old Testament, the judgement from God would often come to the people in a grand event that would affect the entire nation. Jeremiah’s story here is a good example. When Babylon overthrew Judah, this was one of those times that the entire nation suffered one collective fate, regardless of the differences between their sins. This was something that was a part of Jewish history. The people and the way they acted were watched over by God for centuries before God intervened.
One other familiar example is the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. After the people are leaving Egypt to enter the Promised Land, the people are given the Jewish laws. This runs through the last of the book of Exodus, the book of Leviticus, and the first chapters of the book of Numbers. As they are wandering, they are following the pillar of cloud God uses to lead them. They are gifted the Ten Commandments and that’s wonderful, but when they build a golden calf to worship instead of God, that’s not so great.
But around Numbers chapter 13, they are outside the land of Canaan, the Promised Land, and the people get scared. They send twelve spies in to scout the area. When the scouts send their report, 10 of them come back telling of the wonderful state of the land, but the people are like giants while they are like grasshoppers. This message catches on and all the people begin to wail and complain that they had been led all this way just to die at the hands of the Canaanites.They refuse to enter the land because the Canaanites are simply too big.
[They were telling themselves and God how big their problems were, when they really should have been telling their problems how big their God is.]
But Joshua and Caleb, the two scouts of the twelve that were not saying this said instead not to have fear! Their God is on their side and the Canaanites will be like helpless prey to them. Yet, the Israelites continued to doubt God’s power of deliverance (Crazy right? The very same people God had delivered out of Egypt just two years before!)
The bottom line is that they doubted. After all of the glorious signs and wonders that happen in Egypt and since, they refuse to trust and put their faith in God. This is the last straw for God. He is not happy about it. Instead of receiving the gift of the Promised Land, the ungrateful Israelites do not get the reward they have not earned. They instead wander in the wilderness for 40 years as punishment.
This is like the exile of the Jews to Babylon in Jeremiah’s story. They doubted in God to protect them from their enemies. They doubted God’s power to do what He had claimed He could do. We see from both of these immensely important time periods in Jewish history hinged heavily on their doubt. Their doubt led to a lack of trust in God’s power and a lack of belief in God’s fulfillment of His promises.
Are we doubting in our God? Do we trust in Him to fulfill his promises? How much are we questioning that God could possibly help us get through the hardships in our lives?
A man I knew named Dave was going through a really hard time. He had trouble with a close relationship with someone important to him in life. He and his friend had tried pooling their resources to support each other, giving him a place to live while he helped pay the bills. He worked in the factory with me, and I saw how frustrating life was getting to be for him.
To make matters worse, he was having periods of unexplained anxiety like he had never felt before. He started to miss work and was even hospitalized for it. After he lost his job, things got really bad for a really long time. But there came a point where he was so low that he felt led to look up. And he did. He kept looking up. He found public assistance to live on. He also was given the opportunity to take state provided educational courses on life and made the personal choice to apply what he found there to his own life and the way he lived it. He found a bit of his lost hope and started making choices to improve his life, rather than letting it spiral downward.
Things really got better when Dave had begun a search for affordable housing. He got an appointment to look at an apartment. When he got there early, there was a man working on one of the buildings there. He was the property owner and said he would show him the place when he was finished. Instead of coming back later, Dave offered to lend the man a hand.
That day, Dave was given the place to rent, but not only that, because he stepped up and offered help to the property owner; he was offered a job, starting the very next morning. He hadn’t been able to earn a decent paycheck in months, and now he had both a job and a place to live.
Dave didn’t doubt in the good behind the cheap housing he found, he knew he was greatly blessed to have it. But because he stepped up where work was needed – even though it wasn’t even his responsibility – he was blessed with a job, too (and we all know how essential to life having a job is). Admittedly, he has a long way to go to get back on his feet, but he’s got his head on straight, he is uplifted by the hope in his heart, and has God on his side blessing him all the way.
I share this story because I admire his hope in the face of such a dark time. If he didn’t have hope, he wouldn’t have turned around his life and looked for God’s hand.
As we hear about God’s hand over the Hebrew people, we see how God’s people needed the new covenant to come (I mean, we all did!). We need to have hope when things get dark. For everyone, there comes a day when things get dark, but it’s okay. We can have hope because things are different.
As Jeremiah put it in verse 29: In those days they shall no longer say:
“The parents have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”
We obviously aren’t talking about fruit gone bad. But the point is that God’s judgement on his people is never again to span across the nation or down generations. God looks to each person’s personal choices.
Well, that’s great! We won’t die for the sins of another person: that’s good!
But, we will still die for our own sins: that’s bad; (especially because all of us are sinners – Good thing that isn’t the end of our scripture passage)
It goes on to say, “this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” That’s good! That is so good. We would much rather have a covenant where we have a more direct say over the outcome of our actions. Not just that, we need a savior.
Jesus Christ came to this world so that we might be saved from our sins. We have fear, we doubt, and we struggle to trust in the Lord. God expects so much from us and we have long dismissed who he calls us to be. I know that I need my God to forgive me for who I have been. I feel like I could only become someone new if I can fully let go of who I used to be.
Verse 34 said: “they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”
That is what we take out to the people of this world: That Christ gave humanity the new covenant where we are accountable for our own lives and actions, we are to grow the body of the church with our connections to people who are still without Christ’s light, we are to be forgiven so that we can lay down all that we used to be at the feet of Jesus, take up our cross and follow in his footsteps of service and sacrifice.
Listen to Jeremiah, one last time from chapter 32:39-41: And I will give them one heart and one purpose: to worship me forever, for their own good and for the good of all their descendants. And I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good for them. I will put a desire in their hearts to worship me, and they will never leave me. I will find joy doing good for them and will faithfully and wholeheartedly replant them in this land.
Worship God and He will bless you with His presence in your life. Follow in Christ’s footsteps of worship of the Father in service and sacrifice.
I leave you today with a word from the apostle Paul letter to the Romans 5:1-5
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
Amen.
Momma's Musings 