Jeremiah 31:27-40 • Everything Old is New Again
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Would you look in your Bibles at Jeremiah, the book of Jeremiah, chapter 31.
Jeremiah chapter 31.
You may recall where we are in this through the Bible in a year story.
God has done amazing things to build a kingdom from a slavery nation in Egypt, through David, then Solomon, an expansive kingdom that then begins to divide as the people turn away from God. The kingdom of the north, the much larger kingdom, 10 of the 12 tribes, they actually begin to worship golden calves as though those idols had brought them out of Egypt.
Only Judah and the tribe of Benjamin remain faithful. Just a little pen point of a nation on the world stage. All is remaining. What could get worse than that?
If Judah itself, the southern nation, the remnant remaining also turns to idolatry. If there is no basis for God to maintain His covenant with humanity based upon their actions,
what is God going to do?
Verse 31 of Jeremiah 31, "Behold, the days are coming," declares the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband," declares the Lord, "for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares 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, and no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the Lord, "for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day, and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar. The Lord of hosts is His name.
In this fixed order, if this fixed order departs from me," declares the Lord, "then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever. Thus says the Lord, if the heavens above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth below can be explored, then I will cast off the offspring of Israel for all that they have done," declares the Lord.
"Behold, the days are coming," declares the Lord, "when the city shall be rebuilt for the Lord from the Tower of Hananal to the corner gate, and the measuring line shall go out farther straight to the hill of Garib, and shall then turn to Goa, the whole valley
of the dead bodies and the ashes in all the fields as far as the brook, Kidron, to the corner of the horse-gate toward the east, shall be sacred to the Lord.
Days shall not be plucked up or overthrown anymore forever."
Have you heard of Marsili pain syndrome?
There must be days in your life when you would pray that you would have Marsili pain syndrome. In fact, there are days in your life when you would be delusional not to pray for Marsili pain syndrome because those who have Marsili pain syndrome feel no pain.
No earaches, no sore throats, no migraines, lucky folk.
But they also do not notice if they have an infected toe or a broken bone or a festering wound.
The consequence is described by a mother of a child who has Marsili pain syndrome.
He fell off his bicycle and broke his elbow.
But he did not realize it, so he cycled for another nine miles, so damaging his elbow that it is now beyond repair.
The alarm signals don't go off.
The problems are not noticed. And as a consequence, the danger, the hurt, the harm gets worse and worse. It's hardly ever easy for us to think of pain being a mercy unless you understand it to be the alarm that's turning you from greater danger. And you need that to be able to read this passage of Scripture where the alarms are just blaring loud at us. Verse 28, God speaking to Jeremiah says, "It shall come to pass that as I have watched over them, my people." These are words of shepherding, of care for people. "As I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring harm." Hey, this sounds like it hurts.
This sounds like pain.
But that's not the end of the plan.
The end of verse 28, "So also the Lord says, I will watch over them to build and to plant declares the Lord." It is so hard but necessary to believe that the pain that we think signals the abandonment of God is in fact the divine alarm in our lives where God may be saying through sin or its consequences. This is the alarm going off saying you are about to reach the threshold of human spiritual harm.
But at the very same moment God is saying, "But even as you reach the threshold, you shall not breach the love of God.
He is going to maintain His purpose, His plan, His hand in your life." While this chapter has those alarms going off in ways that scare us, it is the same way as some of the most precious words in all of Scripture about the covenant-keeping love of God. Right at the beginning of the chapter in verse 3, God speaks through Jeremiah to say to His people, "I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, I have continued faithfulness to you." The same God who says, "I know there's pain, but I have loved you with an everlasting love and I have continued faithfulness to you." What does that faithfulness look like in the midst of pain?
Among other things it refers to an amazing promise of return, a return of blessings. Verse 27, the Lord says, "Behold, the days are coming when I shall sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and the seed of beast." It's strange language to us. But God is saying the house of Israel, that's the northern kingdom that has already erected
calves of gold and said those are their gods.
And now the southern kingdom, Judah, itself is turning to idolatry and God is saying, "But I will yet sow the seeds of life of both humanity and your flocks and herds.
I will yet bring life. I have not forgotten the promises that I made to you and to your forefathers. I will return the blessing." Now for Israel to hear that, that's the northern kingdom. That was the kingdom that Isaiah prophesied to saying that great harm would come to them because of their idols of gold.
But right now Jeremiah is talking to the little remnant in the south and he is saying, "Because you've turned to idolatry, Babylon is coming and you will be enslaved and you will suffer, but God has not forgotten you." And when Jeremiah says to the southern people, "God is going to rebuild you even though nothing has happened yet." He says though, "We had stood with somebody on 910 before the Twin Towers in New York City and said on 910, "God will rebuild them."
You would say, "Well, what? Is something going to happen?"
Well, we know now 9-11, but we didn't know then.
And Jeremiah is speaking to those of the south and he's saying, "God will rebuild. He will put new life, new flocks, new sustenance for you. God will rebuild." But they must be thinking, "Is something going to happen?"
Jeremiah is honest in saying, "Yes, the alarms are going off. They will be great hurt.
But God will heal the past. He will heal your sin. He will heal the consequences of your turning to other gods." What's so amazing in this particular chapter is God is not just saying through Jeremiah that He will heal the past, but He will actually heal the future that has not even occurred yet. What He is saying in verse 29, "In those days, they shall no longer say, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge." It's strange language to us. It's kind of a proverb of the time that a father eats sour grapes and his children bear the consequences. Their teeth hurt.
I recognize, and you do, it's the sad truth that often the influence of parents on their children extends for a long time, even to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me declares the Lord, even as He shows mercy to a thousand generations of those who love Him. There are consequences of our sin, and the Lord looks into the future and He says to those who will be in that future day, "No longer will it be that a child's teeth hurt because of the sins of their fathers." Oh, how we want to hear that. That the way God will work in the future is not just with the corporate state of Israel that has fallen apart in so many ways, but He'll deal individually with His people. And He explains that in verse 30, where He says what will happen, "Everyone shall die for his own iniquity. Each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge." As though God is saying, "Listen, I'm not going to hold you guilty just because you were born into a bad family.
Were you abused as a child?
Is your father an addict?
The way the culture looks at it, are you on the wrong side of town? Were you of the wrong color? Are you the wrong economic, wrong education?" Is your brother a convict?
Not judging you because of that.
I'll take you for you.
And we like the blessing unless we are afraid of our own record. What if it's checkered? What if the first half of verse 30 applies to us? "Behold, the days are coming when everyone shall die for his own iniquity." Oh, I like the individual nature of this new thing that God is going to be doing.
But what if it has consequences that I can't take?
For those people, God not only promises a return of blessing, but a renewal in a very special way of how He will act in behalf of His people. Of those individuals, what will God do? Verse 31, "Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah." He looks at Israel who raised the golden calves and Judah who's in new idolatry and he says, "I'm going to cut a new covenant. I can't depend on you anymore to keep the covenant that I made with your forefathers. So I'm going to cut a new covenant." Literally, the word in Hebrew. To take us back to the covenant that God made with Abraham. Do you remember when the smoking pot representing God went between the halves of the animals? God declaring to Abraham, "May what has happened to these animals happen to me, the Lord, if I am not faithful to my word to you, to make you a father of many nations, saved by faith in me." And now God is saying, "I'm going to cut a new covenant. I'm going to do it again." But it has certain conditions that the people of God are not accustomed to thinking about. First, it's going to be individual.
But beyond that, it's going to be something amazingly personal.
It has to be personal because of the nature of the sin. Verse 32, "The new covenant is not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them. By the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord."
Why has God got to cut a new covenant?
Because of the actions of the people who have broken the present one. He led them by the hand out of Egypt, and they have rejected His hand.
You know, we read words in the Bible, and sometimes they just kind of see like this intricate maze of spiritual stuff, and we don't feel what's being said. "I took you by the hand, and I led you out of slavery, and I led you to the promised land, and you broke relationship with me."
I remember in my own family when our son was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, and we were just trying to understand a chronic illness that could not be cured, and did not know in early stages how to treat it, what would make him feel well. And one day as he was just struggling in pain and writhing and agony, and there was nothing we seemed to be able to do to bring him comfort. And so I just sat on his bed, and I just began to try to pat him on the back to bring him comfort, and for the first time ever in his life, he took my hand and he slapped it away.
And it hurts me even now to tell you that story, but it hurt them too. It hurt him. He couldn't believe he'd done it. He never did it again. But it spoke of the pain to me, the pain of him to reject a father's hand. And if there's something worse than rejecting the hand of one who loves you, it is God saying, "That's not just what you did. You broke my covenant, though I was your husband.
I was the God who dedicated myself to you unconditionally in a covenant relationship. I loved you. I gave myself for you, and you betrayed me. You went with another idol. You went with another God. You turned to others."
We need to feel the degree of that pain when God is saying, "But I loved you with an everlasting love despite your rejection, despite your betrayal, and I'm going to actually cut a new covenant for such people, not based upon what you do, but based upon my own heart." What will God do? Verse 33, "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the Lord, "I will put my law within them. I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people."
God is saying, "All right, what did we do the first time around? I gave you covenant law on stone tablets, and I put it in the Ark of the Covenant, and we put it in the temple, and we had all kinds of physical, material ways to remind you of my love."
And you slapped my hand away, and you turned your back on me, and you walked away.
So I'm going to cut a new covenant, and it's not just going to be individual. It's going to be internal.
It's going to be something from your heart I'm calling for now, not just external observation, not just things physical. No, I'm going to work inside of you by my spirit. It's going to be the very thing I said to Abraham so early. By faith, are you uniting to me? Am I uniting to you? My grace, you're connecting to by what's inside of you, not what's external.
Some of you know this last week I was in Mexico training pastors. It's amazing to be in other cultures to see those committed to the gospel, virtually all of the 600 to 1,000 pastors, all of them bivocational, day after day, ministering the gospel to God's people, though it's not pleasant, it's not easy, but they're so committed. And the church is growing wonderfully. And the fact that the church is growing does not mean there aren't challenges to the nature of Christianity itself. When I was in Monterey, Mexico, I visited the Sistine Chapel.
Wait a second, I thought that was in Rome.
It is.
But as people have increasingly turned away from physical ritual, from outward signs, what has happened in Mexico is the Roman Catholic Church, to reclaim so many people, actually has built a reconstruction of the Sistine Chapel in Rome with the assumption that people would flock to it.
They are not.
Barely a fraction of those anticipated have gone.
As they seeking something from the heart, not just the external, something in the heart would heal me, give me hope, give me relationship with God. And it's what God is promising here. I will put my word, my law in your hearts. It's me working from the inside out, not you working from the outside in that's going to claim me. And it's not just an internal covenant for individuals. It's indiscriminate. Verse 34, "No longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, "Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest declares the Lord." Isn't that wonderful? There will be this great provision of the mercy of God for all kinds of people, for those considered great, for those considered insignificant. It doesn't matter how much money you have, your recognition in the community, your bad reputation from the past. No, here is God saying, "I'm going to work so that if you have faith in me from the inside, then greater small, recognized, unrecognized, you're mine." This is a mercy that is indiscriminate, which we're very joiced for.
Notice what is inside of us is a darkness and a shame for sin that we cannot escape.
And for that reason, God not only promises this new covenant that is individual and internal and indiscriminate, but says at the end of verse 34, "For I will forgive their iniquity,
and I will remember their sin no more."
Wait, these are the people who've turned to golden calves and said that they are what took them out of Egypt. These are the people that God rescued in the south, and they have turned to idolatry despite seeing what has happened to their relatives in the north. They have all turned away from God, and God is saying, "But I will cut a new covenant." And by faith, not in the nation state of Israel, by faith not in the physical temple, faith not in the physical sacrament, but something internal committed to God who has committed himself to you. What does God promise to do?
I will forgive their sins and remember their iniquities no longer. Iniquities are those internal sins, the things that we wrestle with inside. I'll remember that no more, but we can't forget. And almost everybody struggles to say, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. How can God be God and forget?"
May help you to know that that word "remember" is a Hebrew word for "call."
As God is saying, "I will not call to mind what I know I could credit against you. I won't bring it up. I won't call it out. I won't even remember it. I'll forgive it." Did you hear at Morehouse College the commencement speaker this year was Robert Smith, a billionaire? And at the conclusion of his commencement speech, he said to all the graduating seniors,
"I'll pay for all your student loans.
Don't you wish you'd been at that commencement service?"
Now believe me, he has a record of it somewhere. I mean, he can total out how much people have to pay. But in essence, in our language of the day, he said, "Forget about it.
I will remember it no more." Does he have the accounting? Could he call upon it? Of course he could. He's not going to call it out. He's not going to bring it to mind. He's not going to credit it. It's what he is able to do as he pays the debt for others. And what God is saying to his people, "You knock my hand away.
You betrayed me, though I had given myself to you.
But I will love you.
And I will forget by a decision of the will," not a decision of the intellect, a decision of the will. "I will not call it to mind." Isn't that amazing? What we cannot forget, God says he will forget.
The moment of rage, the impulse of lust, the wickedness of heart that we can't forget.
God says, "But I'll not call it to mind.
You and I both know he knows.
But he has chosen as an act of divine will and mercy not to call it to mind for those hearts who are set on him." Can this possibly be true?
The assurance that God gives is just incredible for us to understand. As God wants to say, "How do you know this is really going to be true?" Because it's a promise as sure as creation itself.
We have to read these words fast, but maybe when you're on vacation, you could return to them. Verse 35 of Jeremiah 31, "Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that his waves roar. The Lord of hosts is his name. If this fixed order departs from me, declares the Lord, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever." Hey, if the sun stops shining and the stars stop glowing and the waves stop falling, stop rolling, well then I'll stop loving you.
Can you do this on vacation? At our vacation cabin, we have a place we call Starry Dam. It's a dam between two large lakes. And when we want to see the stars in full glow, we go out and we lie on the top of the car and look up at the stars waiting for the shooting stars.
Can you just think if you see the sun at the beach or the waves coming against the shore or the stars going at night, when that stops, God will stop loving me.
As long as they glow and the sun will shine and the waves will roll, that's how long God's love will keep going.
He says even in the next verse 37, "Thus says the Lord, if the heavens above can be measured."
You know, even our best cosmologists say maybe this isn't even the only universe.
Maybe there's another one. And another, maybe there's a billion billion universes.
If those universes can be measured and the foundations of the earth below can be explored, then I will cast off the offspring of Israel for all that they have done, declares the Lord.
Do you catch it? If you could actually do those things, at that point I'll stop loving my people too, but until then, they can rest in my love.
We need to hear that. Those of us who recognize, "I don't just need God to heal my past, I need God to heal my future. I need God to take care of things I cannot take care of. I need God to forget what I can't forget. I need God to forgive, to show mercy. I need to believe that His covenant is stronger than my commitment." And God says, "Look at the sun.
As long as it glows, I will love. And as long as stars shine and waves roll." You know, in our own history as a nation, we remember those words of American presidents to Native Americans, right? As long as grasses grow and rivers flow, this land shall be yours.
What's the problem?
We didn't keep our promise.
God is promising as long as grasses grow and rivers flow. He will love. What is the great assurance of that?
He actually says, verse 38, "Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when the city shall be rebuilt." Now, again, we're standing in front of Jerusalem. It's still there. But God is saying, "There is a great crisis coming, but I will rebuild the city, for the Lord shall be built, for this city shall be built for the Lord from the Tower of Hananal to the corner gate." You don't recognize the dimensions, but you're just saying, "I'm going to re-establish the city that's here."
But that's not all. Verse 39, "And the measuring line shall go out farther, straight to the hill, Gareb, and shall then turn to Goa." I'm not just going to rebuild this city.
I'm going to expand it into what direction? Verse 40, "The whole valley of the dead bodies and the ashes in all the fields as far as the brook, Kidron, to the corner of the horse gate toward the east shall be sacred to the Lord." Now, it doesn't mean anything to you. The Hebrews understood. That was the nature of their idolatry by the time that Jeremiah is talking.
They are sacrificing their children in fire to the god Molech in the Hanan Valley.
To get Molech to approve me, I put my child in the fire.
And it became a garbage heap in the time of Jesus, smoldering dung and garbage beneath the temple so that Jesus would say, "If you even say to your brother thou fool, you are going to hell." And the word of use for hell is Gehenna, the Hanan Valley, where sacrifices were made of children and garbage is burned. And now what is Jeremiah saying?
Even where there has been this heinous sin and this terrible pollution of the purity of God, God will make it all sacred.
He will extend His covenant blessings. He will even spread them wider out so that people who could not deserve it recognize a covenant that is now individual and internally committed to not by works of performance, but by God's blessing those who set their hearts on Him. And what He will do by this covenant is He will remember our sins no more. In fact, He will declare sacred what in our own lives we are so ashamed of. He has said, "I will build up the walls again. I will make the city sacred again. I will bless you again." And the very final words at the end of the 40th verse, "For this city shall not be plucked up or overthrown anymore forever. I will establish Jerusalem. The enemies may come, but it shall not pass from the face of the earth." Why? Because my son comes to Jerusalem and he shall give himself for the sins of my people and he will establish a new covenant whereby through faith in what he has done, God will establish a people forever.
This is not just for them. This is God's great promise to us that as we in heart are committed to Him, each one of us, that God says, "I'm just going to deal with you as you. Do you believe in me? Do you trust me as your heart committed to me? Then I will forgive your sin. I will forget your iniquity and I will take the pollution and the heinousness of your life and I will cover it over because that is what I promise to my people in the covenant that I make." Not dependent upon you, but upon His mercy. I have a friend, Jim Kena, who says he was raised in a church that used to say, "The way in which you make sure that you are God's is you just be good enough."
And for that reason he said he always used to pray that Jesus would come on Sunday afternoon because he thought he could stay good from Sunday morning to Sunday afternoon. After that it was kind of dicey.
That's not what we believe.
I believe there's none righteous, no not one.
That I am daily as well as eternally dependent upon the grace of God and what He has said from the beginning. All right, let's just you and I talk.
Do you believe in me?
That I make a way for you and that I have forgiven your sin and covered over the pollution and the heinousness of the past and for that reason you have me forever. I will forgive your sin, remember your iniquity no more, praise God. What we are about to do is remember precisely that promise. This is the new covenant not maintained by any ritual. Here we look back to what we trust, what He has done and say, "Thank you Jesus.
For the covenant where you deal with me and what's in my heart and do so by forgiving my sin as I trust in you."
And then we're like this forever, praise God. Father, so work your word into our hearts. We are about to partake of this Lord's Supper and in doing so what we do is we don't claim the goodness of what we're doing.
This is not some ritual that we follow to make ourselves right with you. You said to do this in remembrance of you. We are remembering that you have pledged not to remember.
That by the work of Jesus Christ you have covered over our sin and in covering over our sin you are not asking us to earn it somehow, your grace and mercy, but to believe that what you have provided is sufficient for us.
And when we believe that, you promise to be our God now and forever.
Thank you for the Savior.
Thank you for a people who by their pain sometimes learn of a God who's saying, "Alarm, Bell, Mark, don't keep going that path, but turn to me, for I will hold you and keep you and forgive you now and forever."
So bless us Lord Jesus, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.