Sunday, October 20,
2019
There’s a distance so great, it’s
hard for us over here to understand what they’re saying over there. We need to!
We need what they have over there.
We are 21st century Christians. They were Jews exiled in Babylon in the 6th
century BC. The word of God spoke to
them through the prophet Jeremiah is also God’s word for us. How can we receive God’s word when the
context in which it was originally spoke is so utterly different than the life
we live in the world as it is now? How
do we span the gap of many centuries and receive the word of God?
We can ask questions.
What was exile like? Jews forced into exile Babylon probably lived
in cramped, unsanitary quarters. Most
likely, they had to work long hours in menial jobs with little pay. They had no civil rights. They had no civil services. To survive, they had to depend on their
captors, the ones who forced them to live like this.
What is life like for us, Christians
in America? Many think Christians’ social
influence has diminished significantly.
More and more people openly declare that they have no religion: the
“nones,” so labeled because when asked their religious preference, they
respond, ‘none.’ As Christians lose our
public voice, we fight with we each other.
In some cases, Christians are openly hostile to one another over
theological or more often political or moral differences.
Does any common thread tie us to the
Babylonian exiles, the original recipients of Jeremiah’s prophesy? The circumstances are clearly different, but
in both communities, a couple of dynamics are in play. The exiled Jews were powerless. Christians today feel like our public voice
has been almost silenced. The exiled
Jews feared they might not have a future.
They feared annihilation. Some Jesus
followers today, with much anxiety, wonder what the church of Jesus Christ will
look like in America 100 years from now.
Will anyone proclaiming the gospel in the next century?
Written
so many years ago and so many cultures removed from us, Jeremiah still speaks
to us. Listen these promises from God
found in the earlier verses of Jeremiah 31.
The exiles desperately needed God’s words to be true. So do we.
“The people who survived … found
grace in the wilderness” (Jeremiah 31:2).
The Lord said to Israel (and says to
us, his church), “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3).
Next, God promises. “Again I will build you, O Israel. Again you shall take your tambourines and go
forth in the dance of merrymakers” (Jeremiah 31:4).
“Again
you shall plant vineyards … and enjoy the fruit” (Jeremiah 31:5).
“Sing aloud … and be radiant over
the goodness of the Lord” (Jeremiah 31:12).
God promises reversal of
fortune. “Their life shall become like a
watered garden and they shall never languish again. Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance,
and the young men and the old shall be merry.
I will turn their mourning into joy.
I will comfort them and give them gladness for sorrow” (Jeremiah
31:12e-13).
God’s heart breaks for His
people. Calling Israel ‘Ephraim,’ God
asks, “Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he the
child I delight in? As often as I speak
against him, I still remember him.
Therefore I am deeply moved for him.
I will surely have mercy on him, says the Lord” (31:20).
What do we see in Jeremiah 31? God delights in his child. He is deeply moved out of love for all his
children, including each of us. The New
Testament epistle First John, in chapter simply says, “God is love” (4:7,
16).
All of the early verses in Jeremiah
31 lead up to this promise. “This is the
covenant I will make with the house of Israel. … I will put my law within them,
and I write it on their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my
people” (31:33).
I was touched as I read the comments
of Old Testament scholar Gerhad von Rad in his reflections on this new covenant
in Jeremiah, the covenant written on our hearts. Von Rad sees this as something so unexpected
that the change God brings about is complete and irreversible. Once God plants his word in our heart, the written
word is no longer needed and sermons are no longer necessary because, with the
word planted in us, we no longer sin. Von
Rad says, “What is outlined here is the picture of a new man who is able to
perfectly obey because of a miraculous change of his nature” (Rad, p. 182,
183).[i]
Can he be right? When God inserts His law in our hearts, does
it mean we are able to perfectly obey God’s will? Read everything in the Bible that comes after
Jeremiah 31. We know that’s not
right. We know people failed as
disciples yet were God-worshipers. We
know God did not stop speaking after Jeremiah 31. There’s a Jeremiah 32! There are other prophets. Jesus and Paul spoke. Gerhard von Rad was a renowned scholar. What was he saying as he thought about the
new covenant described by Jeremiah?
I think the point he raises that we
need to come to grips with is the idea that we become completely new. When God writes the new covenant on my heart
and on yours, we are no longer who we were.
The exiles had to learn how to be the people of God while in exile. We live after Jesus came, died, and
rose. Our meeting with God comes through
faith in Jesus as Lord as we meet Jesus in the Bible and through the Holy
Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God, leading
us to confess Jesus. Just as Jeremiah
promised, God writes His will on our hearts. We become new creations (2
Corinthians 5:17). The old me, the old
you, has passed away. We are made new in
Christ.
In Romans 2:29, Paul likens this
change to circumcision – the physical marker that indicates a man is truly of
the people of God. He writes, “Real
circumcision is a matter of the heart – it is spiritual and not literal.” That opens the way for non-Jews,
uncircumcised people to be accepted as Jesus followers. It also allows for women who don’t get
circumcised to be marked as God’s people: marked by the Holy Spirit.
But
spiritualizing circumcision must not neuter the power of the image. Circumcision is surgery, the most intimate
form of surgery. When God writes his law
on our hearts, it is as invasive and bloody as when someone goes through surgery:
open heart surgery.
Does
the change mean we don’t sin anymore? Is
that where spiritual growth leads? This
process used to be called sanctification. Through our growth in Christ, we become so
like him we become near perfect. Is God
able and willing to do that? If the
answer is ‘yes’ and God in Christ renders us perfect as the Father in heaven is
perfect, can we still be said to have free will? Or do we become spiritual automatons who
don’t sin because we don’t have the choice to sin?
I
don’t know. I want to believe God’s
promises, spoken by the prophet Jeremiah.
I go back to all those words hope in the early verses of chapter
31. Finding grace in the wilderness;
seeing mourning turned into joy; exchanging our sorrow for God’s gladness; I
think about the most difficult experiences in life and I want this all to be
true. I want God’s law planted in
me. I want God to give me a new heart
and to help me see the world that way He sees it.
More
than wanting it, I believe God does this!
Based on my experiences with God in worship, in meeting God in the
Bible, in seeing God in my own private prayer time, and in encountering God as
God is at work in the world, I know these promises can be trusted. God does a new thing in each of us.
I
still believe in free will. Jesus walked
on earth. People could touch God -in-the-flesh,
yet they had the choice to reject him and many did. He chose twelve disciples to walk with him
and spend all their time with him. No
one knew him better. They were Jesus’
inner circle, but they still had freedom, and they used it. One denied him, one betrayed him, and they
all abandoned him. We can be ‘in Christ’
and still make mistakes. The exiles had
to choose. Would they wallow in
exile-misery or choose to be faithful God even in their circumstances? Christians today, must choose to live as new
creations with eyes fixed on God or to join the world around us and reject God.
What
is the path forward?
The
exiles had to learn to worship God and live as the people of God in
Babylon. Another group of Jews was in
Egypt. The diaspora became the context
for living faithfully.
Christians
in a world uninterested in God, in a world that glorifies the self must declare
that Jesus Christ is Lord; Lord in our homes, Lord in our church, and Lord of the
world. So many signs point to a world
that’s turned its back on God. Violence
run rampant; decreasing faith and declining morality in our culture; in the
face of these and other signs of societal decay, we stand certain of this. Jesus is Lord.
That
means we are always people of hope. As
Hillside Church, we follow Jesus, love others, and share hope. Yes, Jesus died on the cross, but he also
rose from the grave and promises to come again.
As we tell the good news about him, the Holy Spirit empowers us. We are born-again, Spirit-filled people.
Hope
is God’s future for Hillside Church. The
reason we are in this neighborhood, in this town, at this time, ready to leap
into the future with our new name and new calling is God placed us here with a mission
and God calls us to fulfill that mission.
Hope
is trust that God’s goodness is without limit for those who choose to follow
Jesus. Through his prophet Jeremiah, God
promised to write his word on our hearts.
We come before the Lord open, ready to be filled and sent out in his
name. It doesn’t matter how many people in
our culture are believers. We are sent
to love all, believers and unbelievers alike.
We have the hope of a new heart and we are to share that hope. The world needs it.
AMEN
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