January 22, 2001

February 5 Lesson

Amidst despair, God speaks a fresh promise ___Jeremiah 31:27-34 ___27"The days are coming," declares the Lord, "when I will plant the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the offspring of men and of animals. 28Just as I watched over them to uproot and tear down, and to overthrow, destroy and bring disaster, so I will watch over them to build and to plant," declares the Lord. 29"In those days people will no longer say, 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.' 30Instead, everyone will die for his own sin; whoever eats sour grapes--his own teeth will be set on edge. ___31"The time is coming," declares the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them," declares the Lord. ___33"This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the Lord. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the Lord. ___"For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more."

___By Matt Cook
___Have you ever noticed how often God promises something in Scripture?
___ "Are you hungry, Adam? You can snack from any tree in the garden, except that big one in the middle. Try the oranges; they're my favorite."
___"Don't worry, Noah. ... This creation comes with a no-flood guarantee."
___"Abram, you're one lucky guy. ... I'm giving you land, wealth and coming soon, a bouncing baby boy!"
___"David, you're doing such a good job as king that I'm going to see to it that one of your line always leads my people."
___It seems like every time you turn a page, God has made another promise to someone.
___God also made promises to his people as a whole. At Mount Sinai, God made a formal promise, or covenant, with his people (the essence of which is the Ten Command-ments). The Sinai covenant required obedience and promised God's care, provision and blessing to his obedient people. From Adam, to the Hebrews wandering in the desert, to David and beyond, God kept making promises.
___God makes so many promises, he almost sounds like a shifty used-car salesman or a dirty politician. It sounds too good to be true. Maybe that's because we live in a world where so many promises are broken.
___When a promise is made, we don't trust it because we've been hurt before. What does it say about our culture when one of the biggest promises any individual can make, a marriage covenant, is broken by 50 percent of the people who make it? We've stopped believing that people will keep their word unless it is to their benefit. And then along comes God, and he starts telling us all he wants to do for us, and to our cynical ears it sounds like a gimmick. Can we really trust anyone, even God, to make and keep so many promises?
___The answer is yes! God's faithfulness has never been less than perfect. Scripture bears witness to God's faithfulness to keep the covenants he makes with his people.
___Unfortunately, Scripture also bears witness to the tendency of human beings to take advantage of God's goodness by taking his promises for granted. God made a promise to Adam and Eve to provide for their needs--and they ate the one forbidden fruit. God makes a promise to Noah and his family--and Noah gets drunk and disgraces himself. God makes a promise to Abram to bring him a son--and Abram takes matters into his own hands by impregnating Hagar. God promises David's line will forever lead his people--and David commits adultery with Bathsheba.
___And the Sinai covenant? Well, the ink was barely dry (or maybe the tablets were barely chiseled) when the people asked Aaron to make them a golden calf to worship. Even a big ol' miracle like parting the Red Sea wasn't enough to convince the people to trust God. Time after time, God made a promise, and his people took it for granted.
___Instead of losing his patience, God decides to make another covenant with his people. In the book of Jeremiah, God declares a "new covenant" that will both aid and transform the Sinai covenant.
___In the day Jeremiah penned his prophecy, hope was in scarce supply. The southern kingdom of Judah had recently become free from the dominating influence of the Assyrian empire and with this freedom had come an accompanying sense of national unity and pride. At first, this national sense of well-being also contained a sense of religious revival Jeremiah would have approved.
___It didn't last. Belief in God's providence soon turned into complacency and the over-confidence that God would protect the national identity of Judah no matter what the conduct of his people. This national pride became dangerous as Judah attempted to walk a thin line of independence between two larger powers, Egypt and Babylon.
___The attempt failed, and Judah was conquered by Babylon in 605 B.C. A further attempt at rebellion against Babylon ended even more disastrously, and Jerusalem was virtually destroyed in 587 B.C. Most people are taken into exile in Babylon, and the few who remain have no independent identity as a people. They felt lost and hopeless.
___These events, coming so soon after a national revival in the preceding century, crushed the hopes and beliefs of many faithful people. The people of God felt defeated, abandoned and, most of all, hopeless. And yet, in the midst of despair, God began to speak to his people again. God offered yet another promise. In what we know as the 31st chapter of Jeremiah, God speaks of a covenant that will be "written on the hearts" of his people.
___A holistic covenant
___(v. 27)
___ In what might seem like a strange addition, God promises to fill the now empty land not just with humans but also animals. When God restores something, he doesn't do it halfway. All of creation is caught up in his covenant. The people of God can expect, then, much more than a political restoration. The Israelites expected only their political identity to be restored, but all of life will be transformed by this covenant.
___Such a covenant helps us, as human beings, from being too confident in ourselves and our societies, cultures and political arrangements. We are only a part of God's great creation. Remembering that can help us avoid the temptation to place ourselves at the center of the way we live our lives instead of God.
___A covenant of rebirth (v. 28)
___The consequences of disobeying the earlier covenant are painfully recounted. The lives of God's people have been uprooted and torn apart. The nations of Israel and Judah have been overthrown and destroyed. Disaster has occurred. The good news is, according to Jeremiah, that these are past events, and we now can anticipate a time of building and planting. There is more than a hint of grace here. Sin has consequences, but God is always holding out hope for us of a time when we are restored to fellowship with God.___
___A covenant of personal responsibility (vv. 29-30)
___God's covenant with his people at Sinai was corporate. Thus, both the responsibility for and blessings from the covenant included the people as a whole. The people of Jeremiah's day had misinterpreted that in two ways. Some saw it as fatalistic. Why attempt to be righteous when someone else's sin would eventually bring you disaster? Others used the corporate nature of the covenant to shift the blame for sin to earlier generations.
___God's new covenant, however, shifts the focus from the nation to the individual. Here in the text of Jeremiah is an undergirding for the idea of the priesthood of the believer. Yet this idea expresses itself, first, in terms of responsibility, not freedom. God expects personal responsibility for sin, including its consequences. Not only is each individual believer free, but also responsible. God will not allow us to blame our sin on factors external to ourselves. We cannot blame sin on our upbringing or our culture.
___A covenant of corporate responsibility (v. 31)
___Although the focus of this covenant may shift from the nation to the individual, it still includes a vital corporate dimension. God still makes his covenant with "the house of Israel" and "the house of Judah." God's covenant with these two "houses" helps create a necessary tension between an individual relationship with God and the community within which that relationship must take place.
___God isn't just renewing persons; he is renewing a people. In this covenant, then, we are called not only to a personal relationship with God, but to a personal relationship that is dependent upon our participation in God's "house" (the church, in New Testament terms).
___A different covenant (v. 32)
___God's grace is in full and glorious display. The reader is reminded of the willful disobedience of God's people in breaking the Sinai covenant. This covenant is like marriage vows that have been broken. Here is an analogy that speaks to our present circumstances. A dedicated spouse has been betrayed. Marriage vows have been shattered. Instead of condemnation, God looks for a new and different way to express love that will communicate to the one who has done the cheating.
___There is also great hope here. God's love will not be thwarted by our human failings. God constantly is seeking to renew us despite our failings.
___A radical covenant (vv. 33-34)
___The text now returns to the personal nature of this covenant expressed in verses 29-30, now using positive terms. This covenant will not be written on stone tablets or contained within an ark in the temple. This covenant will be written on the heart of every believer. Thus every believer will know God. This isn't knowing in terms of information but the much more comprehensive idea of knowledge--the idea of intimacy with God. This intimacy will not be reserved for a few, but will be available to all--women and men, rich and poor, "from the least of them to the greatest."
___Social hierarchies are obliterated by this new covenant. This radical leveling takes place only by the grace of God and not through any human strategy. Only such divine grace is capable of not only forgiving but completely forgetting those past transgressions.
___Matt Cook is pastor of First Baptist Church in Rosebud

For thought and discussion
___ How has God shown you his faithfulness to keep his promises in your life? Has the way God kept a promise to you ever played itself out in a surprising manner? How so?
___ Why does God keep his promises even when we do not? What does that teach us about the nature of God? What should that teach us about our promises to others?
___ What does the involvement of parts of creation other than human beings in the new covenant say about our relationship to the environment?
___ Does the new covenant replace the Sinai covenant that God had already made? What is the relationship between the two covenants?
___ How are freedom and responsibility related in our relationship with God?
___ If the new covenant is placed within our hearts then where was the old covenant located? What does this change in location for the covenant say about how God relates to us? What does the change say about what God expects from us?
___ God promises a covenant to which every believer from the least to the greatest will have access. How does that access affect the way we relate to each other as believers?

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