Jeremiah 31
God’s people will be sent into exile. By this point in the history of God’s Word, this is not new news. Even the message that there will be a restoration from that exile, as good as that news is, is not really new. But what if the people are restored to the land without any fundamental inner change in their souls that would yield a different result in a communal life of obedience? How good will the news of their return actually be. The problem will be the temporary nature of the good that will come. If God might still remove them from the land for their violation of His covenant, how long will it be before another exile is necessary?
Of course, the Lord is very patient. Though many lost their lives in the wilderness, when their children were brought into the Promised Land, a downward spiral soon began in the life of the Lord’s nation that continued throughout the book of Judges. There were occasional improvements that were substantial, and we are thankful for all of them. Who would want to minimize the blessing of a David, or a Hezekiah, or a Josiah? Still, after centuries of warning, the long-awaited curse of the covenant would come. The question becomes this: Is there anything better than this coming? If not, then we could only expect a continual cycle of restoration, decline (with occasional exceptions), eventual exile, followed by another restoration, and the story would go on and on.
In Jeremiah, not for the first time, but in one of the most famous and direct times in the history of God’s speech to His people, we are told about something that is really new and really good. All along we knew that there had to be some news like this that would eventually come about. The promises of the Lord’s goodness were just too big and too secure to find their ultimate fulfillment in an unending cycle of decline, exile, and restoration. God loves His people with an everlasting love. The people are pictured in various places as having a full and happy obedience that seems unknown in any day. In the experience of history, the northern tribes represented by the name of the one tribe “Ephraim” have not been an example of the best spiritual record. How will it happen that watchmen from the hill country of Ephraim will be inviting everyone to go to
To be sure, the news is not absent of tears immediately. There will be weeping mothers in
The way that this will come about will involve a woman encircling a man. There is a sense in which that happens every time a baby boy is conceived within the womb of his mother. Yet this would be different than any other conception. This time the Lord has called it “a new thing on the earth.” Through the miraculous virginal conception of the Son of God, a new man has come. This man does not have the stain of original sin that come to those who are merely of Adam. He is new and He is good. He has the power to bring about something both new and good that is decidedly different from a cycle of frustration.
Through Him, the Lord will surely bless His people. Through Him a great throng of weary souls will be satisfied. There will be an expression of this great ultimate victory given to us in a new covenantal arrangement that is announced clearly and remarkably in Jeremiah 31. Somehow this new covenant will not be like the one that God made through Moses. We should commit to our hearts and minds what the newness of this covenant is, especially in two important areas.
First, the stability of the covenant will not be a matter of our obedience, thus removing from the people of God the continual threat of a just curse upon us for our disobedience. We are told that the former covenant “they broke.” It was not merely a matter of fatherly discipline when God’s people faced the sanctions of the Mosaic arrangement. They broke the covenant. In this new arrangement, it is not as if complete obedience on our part is immediately promised, but what we do have is a secure and abiding forgiveness of sins apart from an ongoing sacrificial system. This is because that One Man who is at the very center of our forgiveness would be the sacrifice that would so effectually remove the debt of our sin that no additional debt would remain against us. We will not break this covenant. His obedience and death secures it.
Second and most clearly celebrated in this chapter, this new covenant would be characterized by the creation of a new humanity from the depth of our spiritual being, expressed in an increasing knowledge of God, love for Him, and obedience to His ways. Having secured the foundation of this covenant in the righteousness of the New Man Jesus Christ, the Lord announced here His determination to bring many not only the legal standing of being new men in Christ, but even the actual heart and life of new men in Christ.
This plan for a new covenant is so full and so secure, that we must admit that we have not yet experienced the fullness of it. We should believe this Word delivered by Jeremiah. Our faith is aided by the fact that so much of what Jeremiah has announced here has already been accomplished in the coming of the Messiah and the gift of the Holy Spirit upon the Church. Come soon Lord Jesus! Bring the fullness of grace to Your people, that we might go forth with eternal praise as true citizens of
posted by Pastor Magee @ 7:00 AM
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